Security threats Toolkit

Story: Thinking of ditching IE? Think again

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Yarden might have been well intentioned in writing this, but it comes across as FUD. While IE is the #1 target for malware authors because it has the largest browser share, its so often the *victim* of malware attacks because of its gaping security flaws. Yarden protests that Firefox has security issues of its own... and yet, tiny Mozilla is able to fix them with remarkable speed; Firefox is already up to version 1.0.7 for that reason. Microsoft seems to release patches whenever they get around to it (and I would argue that it hasn't really changed all that much since version 6 was introduced in 2001). If you go to secunia.com you'll see that while Firefox currently has 3 flaws (the worst being "Less critical"), IE has *20* (the worst being "Highly critical" and dating back to 2003!)

A much better article would have been "Thinking of ditching IE? Avoid these pitfalls" and could have talked about a well-planned gradual migration instead of a disastrous abrupt one (actual examples are good; perhaps also contrast with sucessful/unsucessful Linux migrations).

Consider that you could start a company on the right path by installing Firefox with IEView:
http://ieview.mozdev.org/
(FF and IE icons both on the desktop)

Then inform employees of Firefox as an option that's going to eventually replace IE and explain that for the time being they can continue to use IE as the default browser or switch early to FF if they prefer. For those on FF, if they get to a website (as part of their business) that doesn't work right, they should report it to a Sysadmin on the migration project and use IE for it temporarily.

The Sysadmins can then figure out what is going on with those sites and begin to work on solutions (e.g. contacting the website in question or perhaps creating extensions to fix the code dynamically)

In the mean time, as most problems are solved, it should be announced that FF is the new default web browser, but that IE can still be used as a backup via IEView (but remove the blue E from the desktop).

Finally, when everything works well with FF, then you put severe restrictions on IE usage (e.g. sysadmins only; remove IE icon from start menu)

This is the same sort of gradual migration you can also do to transition from MS Word to OpenOffice or even from Windows to Linux. To pooh-pooh the idea is to admit that you'll be a slave to Microsoft forever.

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