If you want to achieve a fuss-free, effortless web browsing experience, you need to have the best browser. Currently, Google Chrome is at the top of the heap with the rest of the competition playing catch-up. Two of the leading browser's major competitors are Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Edge. While all three are free to download, the Edge is exclusively available only to Windows 10 users.
Microsoft Edge is shaping up to be a decent browser despite its newness. A recent study from NSS Labs shows that the browser made by the Redmond tech giant is living up to its tagline of being a "faster, safer browser for Windows 10." According to the said report, the Microsoft Edge is the safer browser compared to Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.
Web Browsers Are The First Line Of Defense
NSS Labs, a leading information security company, tested 304 Socially Engineered Malware (SEM) and phishing pages to determine how efficient web browsers are when it comes to security.
The company found out that a Microsoft Edge feature called "SmartScreen" was able to block 99% of the malware. On the other hand, Chrome was able to block 85.8% while Firefox blocked 78.3%.
SmartScreen Feature
The SmartScreen is a website filtering tool that Microsoft first introduced to internet users during the heyday of Internet Explorer 7. Also known as a "Phishing Filter," SmartScreen tells users that the website they are trying to access has malware by displaying a bright red page, making it pretty hard to miss.
Sandboxing
The SmartScreen is not the only thing going for the Microsoft Edge. It also has sandboxing, a security mechanism that involves the breaking up of a browser's components into separate parts - tabs, windows, and plugins - so that in the event of a malicious malware, it will not spread to other areas of a computer. Google Chrome also has this feature, but Mozilla does not.
Automatic Updates
Automatic updates are important because these are security patches meant to resolve bugs and improve the performances of these browsers. Both Chrome and Mozilla implement these security updates in the background whenever users close their web browsers.
In this department, the Edge does things differently. The security patches are done in sync with the Windows 10 updates, which means updates are a bit slow to come, and one must restart a computer in order for the update to take effect.
Privacy Protection
All of the three browsers have their own version of a private browsing method. Chrome has the Incognito mode, Mozilla has Private Browsing, and Microsoft has InPrivate on Edge.
Mozilla has the advantage in this area because of its Tracking Protection feature that removes trackers from webpages that were visited while in Private Browsing mode.
Who's The Winner?
There is no clear winner because Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge have similar features. The NSS Labs report that showed Microsoft Edge as being the "safer" option stems from the fact that the browser does a better job of listing bad websites. However, in other aspects of security, there is not much difference between the two. And although Mozilla Firefox is lagging behind the other two, it is not that far behind.
