Why Internet Explorer (IE) Wins in the Enterprise September 25, 2008

In the last few weeks we have seen Google come out with Chrome. All the news surrounding this got me to thinking what this really means for browser management on the enterprise network. The answer unfortunately is probably not much. Lets face it, which browser out there has tried to address enterprise management requirements in their solutions. While I do like my Firefox icon, from my initial thinking I am left with believing it is Internet Explorer. Tell me how the other browsers supply functionality for:

- Centrally controlled and scheduled updates
- Centrally deployable and enforceable policies for configuration options in the browser
- Deployment of internal CA root certificates (yes this may not be an IE function, but it is much easier because the browser uses the OS certificate store, and therefore the deployment and management functionality).
- Third party browser add on restrictions

While there may be have been attempts in the community to address these issues (i.e. Firefox ADM for Firefox), why should an enterprise commit to such solutions if the commitment of the developer into the future is an unknown. Guys, AD is everywhere, or its has enough of a penetration that surely its worth the effort to try build/support GPO enforcement options.

Now, we can look at it from a business model for the alternative models. Why should they care about the enterprise. The enterprise brings a whole heap of functionality requirements that the consumer space does not, and lets face it, the consumer space is much more forgiving and much larger. However, with the push into the Web console/interface for enterprise systems, by not supporting enterprise requirements the alternative browser teams are giving up on the opportunities for enterprise to require the use of more non-proprietary frameworks from their third party software vendors (bring on the death of ActiveX).

The majority of people may have IE forced upon them during their work life, which is a considerable amount of time. Naturally they become trained/self-trained on the use of IE, so why would they go home and not use IE. Its what they known, its what they are comfortable with. So you can argue that IE maintains its market penetration because it comes with the OS, but maybe the answer is not that simple. People are lazy and don’t like pain, so why would the general population even care about the alternative browsers. Those that have changed, are those that appreciate certain features and functionality, and therefore have got past the personal pain/effort barrier .

Consider this thought: “Hey I have to use Firefox/Opera/Chrome/Safari at work and I like it so much better than IE. How do I install it at home”.

So browser developers, give us real enterprise browser alternatives, and we will train our end users in your solution, and maybe…. Just maybe, it may drive your consumer market adoption.

How I do Research September 12, 2008

It has been a while since I last posted. While I can blame it on my workload I believe its got more to do with falling into to the trap of trying to critic my blogging topics, instead of just writing what is in my head, whether it is of any significant value or not. That being said, as I have been doing quite a bit of research and analysis at work lately, I thought I would write about how I undertake such tasks. So here goes….

Overtime I have developed a process to quickly research a topic, summarise/collate any relevant information, to then be fed into either briefing papers, presentations, risks assessments etc etc. The best way to start is to gather as much information that you can find, that may be slightly related to what you a researching, and dumping it into a repository or storage place for later review. It is important when you are doing the information gather that you don’t fall into the trap of reviewing and filtering information along the way. If you do this you will spend far more time gather information, or you may discount something that may end up have been important when reviewed in conjunction with a supporting document. So I will start by hitting all the different search engines (web, blog, group, image etc) using keywords to try find content. Maybe only reading the title of the content, or skimming the first paragraph or table of contents before decided to copy it to the repository.

So what do I use for a repository. I must say that I have become addicted to Microsoft OneNote for this. Using the virtual printer for OneNote I can printer any web content straight from Firefox quickly and easily. If appropriate I may just use the screen clipping function in OneNote to grab part of an article or image.

Once I believe I have found the majority of the relevant information on the topic I am looking at, then I will start to review what is in my OneNote repository. I will review the articles, blogs, forum posts and sometimes highlight the key points. It is amazing when you do this just how much posted information on a topic is regurgitated time and time again. At this point I may head back to try gather more information based on ideas found in my initial analysis, or I will start to try document a summary of the key points.

This is where I have become dependant on using MindManger from MindJet. MindManager is a software package that allows you to create mindmaps. It is amazing how much information you can summarise and present on one mindmap. In some cases, once I have finished creating a mindmap, I will just make sure its more presentable (i.e. manager friendly coloured topics backgrounds …) and use this to address the issue with the intended audience. Lets be honest, if you trying to present research on a security risk, how many managers are going to read a 10 page paper. You are either forced to try cover your key points in the executive summary , or reduce it to slideware. The benefit of a good mindmap, presented in a manager friendly format, is that you not only convey your key points, you can also convey how your points fit into the bigger picture, or threat landscape.

If you do have to write a supporting paper, or slideware, then the hardest part has already been done by creating a mindmap. All you have to do is dump the key points onto slides, or expand the ideas so that they quickly become paragraphs.

*rant*: The biggest problem I have with OneNote is the Office team sticking their head in the sand and not producing an official Firefox add-on that will provide the same “send to OneNote” functionality for webpages as IE7 (so including nice formatting, as well as the hyperlink comments etc etc). While they are not going to loose OneNote customers by not supporting Firefox, they are not doing anything to keep or attract any of the 10% of people that use Firefox to use OneNote and/or the Office suite. People swap from IE to other browsers for a reason, and they are not likely to swap back without a good reason. What is more value to Microsoft, revenue from developing IE for the OS, or from supporting Office? And yes I know there some has created a OneNote extension, but I am not going to disable secure updates on Firefox to get this add-on working: *finish rant*