A month after Penn State University advised 80,000 students to drop Microsoft’s Internet Explorer for alternatives such as Mozilla’s Firefox, more than 100 companies tell InformationWeek they’re doing the same.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While the results may fall short of a trend–in many cases they involve companies with fewer than 100 employees–there were enough organizations making the switch to deem their actions noteworthy.<\/p>\n
A full 106 of the 186 respondents–57%–to our unscientific poll had recommended to computer users that they switch from IE to an alternative browser. In almost every instance, these organizations said concern over IE security problems hasn’t been overstated.<\/p>\n
Asked to comment on the responses to our poll, Microsoft, through its public relations agency, sent a lengthy E-mail (full text of E-mail) stating, “We’re aware that some people have recommended against IE, but we also know that hundreds of millions of users use Windows because of its broad ecosystem of applications that are constantly being tested and implemented.” Also in its reply, Microsoft states, “Microsoft exhaustively tests all new updates to IE (security and otherwise) to ensure that applications and Web sites continue to behave as expected.”<\/p>\n
Because of the unscientific nature of the poll, perhaps the most reliable information comes from detailed interviews with those working with the two browsers. Some had informal business-technology operations, where people with an affinity for computers become de facto tech staff along with their other duties.<\/p>\n
One Information Technology Services department made the move “because the threats are real and alternatives exist to mitigate Web browser vulnerabilities,” according to a statement the department issued.<\/p>\n
Cliff Kachinske, for instance, said Penn State’s decision prompted him to recommend that the almost 100 employees of his company, Advanced Control Systems, drop IE. Advanced Control Systems has no formal IT department. The hospital uses IBM AIX for its main application server and Red Hat Linux for its E-mail server. At about the same time Penn State was making its recommendation to drop IE, Ben McLendon, director of IT for the Valdosta Women’s Health Center, says he was doing the same. <\/p>\n
He hasn’t made the same recommendation to the hospital’s business office, though, because it’s protected by a physical firewall, anti-spam software on the E-mail server, and server-based Symantec antivirus apps. McLendon’s decision to leave IE alone in the business office touches on the inevitability of a browser that had a market share of 90.6% as of Jan. 7, according to the Web-analytical-application maker WebSideStory Inc. Firefox had a 4.6% market share, according to WebSideStory.<\/p>\n
In its E-mail to us, Microsoft is in line with Yenne: “As long as malicious hackers exist, there is always an opportunity for online threats and no browser is immune to this. Its execs say tweaks are being made periodically. And, in fact, when Microsoft released Windows XP SP2 last summer, there was an upgrade to IE, called Internet Explorer 6 SP2.<\/p>\n
Again quoting from the E-mail from Microsoft: “It’s too early to provide a list of specific [IE] features, but major investments are being made in the areas of end user features, security and privacy, and developer support (for both add-on and Web-site developers).” For some, those words are not half the promise needed to keep them in the IE fold.<\/p>\n
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