[Miso]

There is a bulletin in my company's intranet security site foribidden the installation of Firefox (all version) due to security issues. The bulletin does not elababorate on why specifically, but the organization has been using IE 6 forever and until recently, jumped to IE 8.

Is the company being paranoid?

Edited by Miso, 17 November 2010 - 09:56 PM.

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Does this company care what we think?

[SpywareDr]

Does this company care what we think?

[dsenette]

paranoia is irrelevant in this situation. speaking as a network administrator, security flaws in a software package aren't the only security issues. in a domain environment you cannot assign settings to FF via group policy like you can to IE, which means the admins can't centrally administer the settings in FF. to get the same level of security/configuration on FF as they can with IE they'd have to go to each desk and make the settings manually and then hope the users don't reverse their settings. with IE the admins can make changes or apply policies in one place and it will push out to all computers at once and prevent the user from changing said settings.

[Miso]

@dsenette, so it's more of a control issue not so much of a security issue? in our network environment only firefox can function within the intranet,while IE runs in both intranet and internet environments. my logic is if it can't access the outside (internet) then it's next to impossible for the network to be compromised from someone on the outside by using firefox.

Edited by Miso, 18 November 2010 - 09:27 PM.

[Troy]

In a work issue, control = security.

If Firefox doesn't allow access outside then what is the point of using it? Plus work has said don't do it.

Haha you can tell what sort of work I do (and the monkey).

[dsenette]

@dsenette, so it's more of a control issue not so much of a security issue?

well it's both. the only way to achieve security is through control.

in our network environment only firefox can function within the intranet,while IE runs in both intranet and internet environments. my logic is if it can't access the outside (internet) then it's next to impossible for the network to be compromised from someone on the outside by using firefox.

it's only "impossible" because they've blocked it's use

[Miso]

The reason why one would want to use Firefox is because the old archaic version of IE 6 is being used. Any with a few applications IE is unstable and crashes like a drunk driver on a regular basis. Firefox is not only faster but rock solid. Remember, only the INTERNET access is blocked with Firefox. Firefox is fully functional within the INTRANET environment. It is interesting to see the logic: control=security.

[dsenette]

i don't think anyone's questioned your desire to use it. we're talking about the fact that it's your company's decision that you can't. ergo, if you want to use it you should talk to your boss

[Miso]

lol. ok. thanks for clarifying.