Microsoft boasts that Edge is the browser to use if you want security

sincity · April 6, 2016

Web browser security is a major concern – with plenty of infections occurring due to careless surfing or vulnerabilities in add-ons – so it's not surprising to hear that Microsoft has been boasting because it believes the new Edge browser is doing particularly well on this front.

As WinBeta reports, at the Edge Summit, Redmond claimed that in its first year of existence, the browser hasn't suffered from any zero-day exploits, and indeed there are no known exploits in the wild which are actively targeting Edge.

And when it comes to remote code execution vulnerabilities, Microsoft revealed that there has been a 75% reduction in these flaws that affected Edge in the first five servicing months.

All this has got to be pleasing news to those who do use Microsoft's new browser.

Low profile

You could argue that, being Windows 10 only, and launching without a lot of features such as extensions, Edge has been fairly low profile in terms of usage – the usual figures from analytics firms back this up – and therefore obviously lower on the hit-list for malware peddlers. But then again, this is a browser from Microsoft, so there's definitely a limit as to how low profile it can be perceived as.

And of course, extensions are soon to land in the browser, which will make it tougher for Microsoft to keep a tight rein on overall levels of security.

Extensions went live in the preview build of Windows 10 which was released a few weeks back, although there are only a few of them for testers to play around with at this point. Full support is expected to be implemented in Edge when the Anniversary Update (previously known as Redstone part one) arrives for Windows 10 later this summer.

When extensions go fully operational the browser's adoption may well pick up considerably, making it a more tempting target due to both of these factors.