Hey there! If you‘ve been feeling vulnerable lately about web-based cyberattacks entering through your endpoints, you are not alone. Threat actors are absolutely relentless these days with all kinds of tricks up their sleeves to breach infrastructure by weaponizing links, downloads, email attachments and more.
But what if I told you there was a powerful new defensive layer for your organization that could almost completely eliminate these web-driven threats? Interested to learn more? Read on for the full scoop! I‘m going to comprehensively break down this emerging technology called browser isolation so you can take an informed look at protecting your teams.
What Exactly is Browser Isolation Anyway?
Before we dive deeper, let‘s quickly establish what browser isolation is. At a basic level, browser isolation separates the end user‘s web browsing activity from endpoints and the corporate network.
Rather than having browsing occur locally on devices, it gets shifted to a remote location isolated elsewhere like disposable cloud containers or virtual machines.
Here‘s a high level view of how browser isolation architecture keeps local machines and networks protected:
An example browser isolation architecture (Image source: Cyber Defense Magazine)
As you can see above, by isolating browsing to an external environment, any potential nastiness lurking on the web can be neatly contained away from wreaking havoc on your infrastructure!
Now isolating browsers is not an entirely new concept. The underlying techniques have existed for well over a decade. BUT massive improvements in performance, compatibility and affordability have made them truly viable just within the last few years.
And the stats around web-based risks tell the story of why browser isolation is so urgently needed:
- 71% of cyber attacks originate on the web via phishing, social engineering and malware links according to a 2022 SANS report
- Over 1 million new web-delivered malware threats emerge annually based on University of Cambridge findings
- Average click rate on phishing emails with malicious links sits at a startling 29% per Verizon‘s research
With web browsers representing the most prolific vehicle for infiltration and infection, no wonder innovative isolation countermeasures are gaining so much traction lately!
Alright, now that you‘ve got the basics on understanding browser isolation and the pressing security problem it aims to tackle, let‘s explore exactly how it works…
Peeling Back the Layers: Browser Isolation Techniques
There are a few different ways technically to achieve isolating browsers from endpoints. Let‘s compare them at a high level so you know the overall landscape:
Cloud-Delivered Isolation
The most common isolation approach is to host browsing sessions within cloud platforms provided by vendors like Authentic8 Silo, CylancePROTECT, RingCube and others. They assume the management overhead of scaling up virtual machines or containers on demand for customers.
Cloud isolation offers convenience but at the cost of directing web traffic outside of your network perimeter to the provider‘s data centers. So for highly regulated sectors like finance and healthcare with strict data residency rules, this model may be problematic.
On-Premises Isolation
Alternatively, some organizations deploy isolation Capability internally using appliances like the Red Box iSOC solution or VMware Horizon. This allows browsing to be proxied through internal infrastructure while avoiding the public cloud.
The tradeoff here is increased capital and operational overhead with having to scale your own isolation environment. And vendors may impose hardware restrictions around certified server configurations. But data never leaves your perimeter.
Client-Side Isolation
The third flavor takes a decentralized approach of isolating browsing on the endpoint itself using lightweight virtualization. Bromium pioneered the concept of disposable micro-VMs spawned locally to sandbox web activity right on the device.
Performance is excellent but protection may be limited depending on how web traffic subsequently egresses from the endpoint post isolation. So certain network topology and firewall rules need to be implemented to complement it.
Now regardless of approach, the mechanics underneath involve redirection of web traffic from local browsers into these isolated environments using proxy servers, system-level hooks, specialized browsers and more. I don‘t want to get too technical here but essentially various types of interception occur under the hood.
Alright, now that you‘ve got a solid handle on how browser isolation leverages these nifty remote browsing techniques to defang web risks, let‘s move on to…
3 Tangible Benefits Your Organization Gains
Beyond just the obvious benefit of severely restricting the ability for web nastiness to permeate your environment, what are some of the ancillary upsides you stand to realize by deploying browser isolation across your workforce?
1. Employees Roam the Web Freely Boosting Efficiency
Since browsing threats pose drastically lower risk now, IT leaders can comfortably unshackle previously restrictive web filtering policies that constrained employee access. Want to access LinkedIn, use webmail, download that hot new eBook? Go for it!
No more drastic limits placed on website categories like social media, streaming media and file transfers that choke productivity in the name of security. Obviously some guardrails still apply around truly objectionable or illegal content. But restraints relax quite a bit!
2. Reduced Headache Managing Endpoints
Endpoint security tools get quite complicated trying to detect web-driven threats. And they almost always require urgent fire drills to quarantine, reimage and monitor infected devices. It becomes exponential complexity as the environment scales up to thousands of nodes across locations.
But with browser isolation defusing these attacks early in the cyber kill chain, several layers of endpoint defense become less critical. Things like intrusion detection/prevention, antivirus, mobile device managers and data loss prevention offer more overlapping vs. additive protection. Many firms successfully consolidate them after implementing isolation.
3. Lower Total Cost of Ownership
At first glance, browser isolation seems like an added software cost. But after tallying up the potential license savings from retiring or right-sizing redundant endpoint agents AND considering vastly reduced breach response expenditures, isolation solutions often pay for themselves within just a year or two.
Some financial services firms reported a ROl exceeding 300% when comparing browser isolation TCO vs the expense of a single endpoint compromise triggering weeks of forensic investigation, remediation and mandatory audits!
Alright, so now you‘ve got a solid understanding of browser isolation approaches and integrations along with tangible upside…
Key Criteria for Evaluation
If indeed browser isolation seems like a useful capability for significantly moving the needle on defusing web dangers, what should you specifically assess when evaluating options?
Here are the 8 essential checkpoints to guide your decision making process:
Isolation Architecture – Will a cloud-hosted, on-prem or client-side model align best with my use case? Do I have strict data privacy regulations to adhere to?
Visibility & Analytics – Can I gain insights into risky browsing behavior and viewing/download trends to continually tune policies?
Threat Detection & Response – What specific threat intelligence feeds does the solution leverage stays ahead of emerging dangers? Is there automation integration with my SIEM and SOAR tools?
Compatibility & Fidelity – Will niche internal web apps render correctly in the isolated container? How degraded is multimedia fidelity for streaming video consumption?
Application & Data Support– Can users access local file shares safely from within isolation to be productive? Is uploading/downloading gated properly?
Platform Support – Are all major operating systems covered including mobility platforms to safeguard remote workers?
Administrative Ease – What type of learning curve exists? How involved is it to configure policies, ingest logs, and customize user portal communications?
TCO Impact – Will reduced endpoint security stack overlap meaningfully offset isolation licensing fees? By how much?
I‘d strongly advise taking 2 or 3 leading isolation candidates for a multi-week POC test drive with subsets of users. Get hands-on rather than just relying on checkmark vendor feature charts!
Alright my friend, we have covered a ton of ground here together on browser isolation capabilities. Let‘s wrap up with a quick summary…
In Closing: A Compelling Web Defense to Consider
If I‘ve done my job explaining properly, you now have a much deeper understanding of:
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What browser isolation is and why its imperative given raging web threats
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Different isolation techniques including cloud proxy, private isolate grids and local sandboxing
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Tangible benefits like unlocked web access, lower security costs and protection gains
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Technical selection criteria like fidelity, platform support and ease of use
…All framed up against the concerning web-driven infection statistics we began with originally.
I don‘t know about you, but it seems to me that exploring browser isolation is probably a pretty smart move given how porous and vulnerable our traditional endpoint defenses have proven recently against the savvy hacking community!
I sincerely hope this guided tour of browser isolation-land was valuable background as you look to modernize protections for your distributed workforce. Here‘s wishing you much safer digital travels ahead my friend! Let me know if any other cybersecurity topics come up I can help simplify.
Talk soon,
[Your Name]
