IT security not only revolves around strong passwords and encryption. It also takes your everyday use of the internet into account. The most common application is your web browser. In this article we will show you how to tweak your browsers security features.

Just a few things

To harden a web browser isn’t really hard and one has to keep only a few things in mind. The times were each setting was up to the user are long gone. Most common web browsers already follow best practice regarding security.

Depending on your browser the following features might be built in and are activated by default. You should check on these features:

• Activate automatic browser updates
• Make sure that the save browsing feature is activated
• Use a master password if available
• Alternatively, you could opt not to save any passwords at all
• Set privacy settings to delete all cookies after each session

Some of those settings are very common and, in many cases, they are already part of your web browser. However, there are a couple of things that you need to add:

• Choose and install a reliable adblocker
• If you want more control you might opt for additional script blockers

While the first extension is a very standard application that comes with self-explanatory settings, the second is more specific. A script blocker will allow you to decide which scripts are executed and which not. To use this tool properly you need to be able to asses which scripts are needed otherwise many websites won’t work.

The above settings and extension will make sure that your browser stays up-to-date while protecting you from certain attacks like typo squatting. Please keep in mind that these are very basic settings that will help you to improve among other things like a password managers, 2FA or general security.

More questions?