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Enterprise-wide Browser Upgrades, IE, and Patching?
newkid asks: "Our company needs to upgrade its standard browser, a difficult decision when we factor security, compatibility and the logistics of actually doing it. For compatibility, Internet Explorer is required by internal applications like IBM Tivoli Storage Manager, so we have to keep it. On the security front, expert bulletins keep ranting every week about the latest gaping holes in IE but nobody really seems concerned: for example, many on-line banking services only work in IE, and they don't check for patches. Meanwhile, users do not care, as a large portion of the traffic still comes from IE 5.5, a version discontinued by Microsoft.
As for logistics,the software distribution technology and the cost of patching both make the project much larger than we can undertake this year.
Our two options are: roll-out IE without patching, or roll-out IE and Netscape, but lock IE so it can only surf on intranet sites, and update NS with rsync or Ant. What is your company doing? What is your strategy? How serious are the security threats? What are the documented security breach caused by IE? We need a reality check."
We've put Phoenix on the desktop, and quick launch bars.
We hid explorer in the Programs->Accessories->System Tools.
And of course, you get Konqouror and Phoenix when you log into our VNC server.
But as far as risk is concerned:
Lthe largest risk is Outlook and Outlook Express - they use the core of IE to do their mail previews. Most of our users don't visit odd websites - but they sure could be sent a virus now and then.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
You mentioned that tivoli's storage manager requires IE but a quick look at their product info page indicats that they support HP/UX,linux,Solaris and other clients and if that is the case then their web software must work with other web clients.
I do all my banking, and the company's with Mozilla with no problems. A friend of mine also uses Moz for his banking. That's three separate banks that have no problem with Mozilla.
There are probably more good choices in web browsers right now than there ever was. It is a good time for change.
Well, IE6 *is* an improvement over NS 4.x
But then again, so is every other browser which does not lie about its CSS support, and can render standards-compliant pages.
The main problem with IE is that it accepts garbage, so people keep using garbage, saying 'it works in IE'...
1) Performance will be an issue if you upgrade from 4.x to a current version of Netscape. Phoenix might be a better solution. There's Opera, too. What kind of processors/OS are you running?
2) Banking sites can usually be tricked with a simple change in the Useragent string in Mozilla/Netscape. Are you sure you need IE?
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Netscape is going to be leaunching the latest version of the Netscape 7.x browser line (probably 7.5) in the next few months. Now that Mozilla/mozilla.org is closing in on 1.4 final, the NEtscape folks will go into hugh gear for the commercial release to be based on 1.4 final, instead of the 1.0.x branch like NS 7.02 is. This will be the best commercial browser on the market, possibly ever. I'd suggest you wait until the release (final probably late this summer) before you roll out. You'll be far more secure, have a cross platform standard, and with IBM's work on their products, possibly be looking at accessing many apps that are currently IE only from other browsers.
jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]
That's odd, we're an all Unix shop and so our Tivoli storage manager is viewed on Netscape (4.79). So, I'm a bit surprised to see that you need to maintain connectivity with the Tivoli system. Also surprised since IBM has a Linix port (previous Slashdot article).
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