Dell Kace Offers Free 'Secure Browser' Virtualization Tool

Dell Kace today rolled out a free browser virtualization solution that can help protect against Web threats.

The new Dell Kace "Secure Browser" solution provides a virtualized instance of the Firefox v3.6 Web browser, replete with Adobe Reader and Flash plug-ins. It uses Dell Kace's homegrown application virtualization solution and will run on a client device without any additional supporting infrastructure.

The technology isn't exactly new as it has been part of Dell Kace's K1000 management appliance, which has an application virtualization feature called "Virtual Kontainers." Now, however, the company has opened up the Secure Browser solution for individuals or organizations to use for free. It can be downloaded from Dell Kace's Web site here.

The difference between using the free Secure Browser version and using it in the K1000 appliance is that the K1000 offers management control to IT pros. Users of K1000 can set restriction policies on multiple virtualized browsers. They have the ability to restrict where browsers can go using a white-list and black-list system, as set by IT pros. Browsers and their policies can also be remotely controlled using the K1000 system.

Secure Browser provides alerts to the user whenever a process starts to run in the browser. Bob Kelly, senior product manager at Dell Kace, said that this feature is similar to Microsoft's User Account Control (UAC), a security alert system introduced with Windows Vista. However, Dell Kace's method has some benefits over UAC, he said.

"The initial release of UAC was kind of annoying because it was popping up all of the time and didn't tell you a lot," Kelly said. "This will only pop up when the browser is trying to start something, which should be something you know about."

News source: redmondmag