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Addressing a problem that IT experts say is becoming more prevalent, software giant Microsoft Corp. added more security to its new version of Internet Explorer today, as well as features that are designed to speed up typical Web surfing tasks.

 

As Jessica Mintz of the Associated Press writes here, Internet Explorer 8 joins a crowded room of browsers that includes Mozilla’s Firefox, Apple’s (News - Alert) Safara and Google’s Chrome.

 

“Each is using speed, security enhancements and new features to fight for a share of Web surfers’ growing time online,” Mintz writes. “Microsoft (News - Alert) remains the dominant player, but Firefox’s influence is growing.”

 

Dean Hachamovitch, the IE group’s general manager, reportedly told Mintz in an interview that the free browser is important to Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft.

 

“For Microsoft, as for Apple and Google (News - Alert), the browser is one more way to build relationships that could sway other decisions, like whether to buy a Macintosh or a Windows computer, or whether to use Google’s Gmail instead of Microsoft’s Hotmail,” she writes.

 

With Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft does a lot of things that people expected – such as reducing the need to copy something from one Web page and pasting it in another – as well as new functionality in its built-in toolbar search box. With the Microsoft IE 8 toolbar, users can type a word into the box and a preview of suggested searches or results appears in a drop-down list, then toggle between different search providers by clicking small icons in that window, and the list refreshes.

 

More importantly for many IT security experts, Microsoft shored Internet Explorer’s protection against malware and so-called “phishing” scam sites, as well as against “cross-site scripting,” where hackers insert code into legitimate Web pages that may attack peoples’ computers.

 

That’s a key new feature.

 

As TMCnet reported, one Santa Clara, California-based Web site security provider found recently that 82 percent of Web sites have had at least one security issue, with 63 percent still having issues of high, critical or urgent severity.

 

Officials at WhiteHat Security say in their “Web site Security Statistics Report” – available for download here – that vulnerability time-to-fix metrics are slowly improving, but continue to show significant room for improvement, typically requiring weeks to months to achieve resolution.

 

According to Jeremiah Grossman, founder and chief technology officer at WhiteHat, Web security is a moving target.

 

“So, enterprises need timely information about the latest attack trends, how they can best defend their Web sites, and visibility into their vulnerability life-cycle,” Grossman said.  “We hope this report continues to be a beneficial tool for actionable information today’s enterprises can use to stay on top of evolving Web site security challenges.”

 

The report finds that only about 50 percent of the most prevalent urgent severity issues were resolved during the assessment time frame.

 

Here’s a chart from the report showing the likelihood of Web sites’ vulnerability, sorted by severity:

 

 

According to Mintz, IE 8 also helps people who create Web sites “prevent another kind of attack called ‘click-jacking,’ in which Web surfers might think they’re clicking on a legitimate button when in fact they're activating an invisible, malicious action.”