One problem with the web is the rate of change. Huge numbers of new web pages appear daily. Although there are browser security tools, few detect issues in real time like Finjan SecureBrowsing. This free browser add-on for Firefox or Internet Explorer finds potential problems using content inspection technology and provides a nice safety check for searchers and webmasters.

As I’m reviewing my web stats, I see that 65% of the people who come to this website started at a search engine. You typed a query and clicked a search results. Did you ever wonder what else might be on this web page? I’m not talking about the words, but hidden code. The type of code found in spyware, trojans and other threats that can take hours to fix.

How SecureBrowsing Works

Finjan’s SecureBrowsing tool offers another protection layer between your search results and the page you wish to visit. Like McAfee SiteAdvisor, they add a color-coded icon next to your search results. While your search results were gathered, Finjan quickly scanned the resulting pages for threats using real-time code inspection technology. They always scan the current page from the website and not a cached copy.

Let’s say you’re interested in ringtones. Using Finjan SecureBrowsing, you can get an indication of how safe these pages are in terms of code threats. To the left of each search result and sponsored link, Finjan places one of three icons.

• Green check suggests the page is safe for browsing
• Yellow question mark suggests page not available for scanning
• Red X suggests potential threat was detected on the page

You also have the option to display icons just for unsafe pages. I find this better as it makes the red icons more prominent.

For most pages, you see the safe green icon. On occasion, you may see the red X icon as shown below. It’s important to realize the icon is alerting you to a potential problem. If I place my mouse over the icon, I get an idea of the threat type.

Where You Can Use SecureBrowsing

One appealing aspect to the product is you can use it in areas other than search engines such as popular web mail services. Using Firefox or Internet Explorer, you can see the safety icons in:

• Google
• Yahoo!
• MSN
• Google AdSense
• Gmail
• Yahoo! mail
• Hotmail
• MySpace
• Digg
• Slashdot
• Blogger

Surprisingly, the product didn’t work with Google Custom Search. For example, the search on timeatlas.com uses this Google product. We enhanced our site search to include many websites we think have good relevant content. However, no icons show next to the results or ads when we use our search. The icons do show for the Google ads that display with a story.

Sometimes the product showed the web page was not available for scanning. I think part of this may have been my Google search preferences. In some cases, I asked for a 100 search results at a time. If I used the default search settings of 10 results, I was fine.

The Power of Suggestion

I think there is a tendency when you see a red X to assume the worst despite that the description states “potential”. I was guilty of this when I started my testing. Early on, I spotted some pages on National Geographic with the red X icon. Having grown up with the magazine, I couldn’t imagine them doing anything to harm a reader. Using a few tools, I still couldn’t see anything on the pages that caused concern so I sent an inquiry to Finjan. I’m not a security expert so I was curious what I was missed.

I received a nice reply from Yuval Ben-Itzhak, Finjan’s CTO, who mentioned that the tool flagged these web pages based on certain JavaScript code. Although National Geographic intended no harm, these pages used a coding technique that could hide malicious code. It’s not that National Geographic hid code, but the potential is there. He also manually reviewed the questionable pages and adjusted the rating.

Why Webmasters Should Consider Using SecureBrowsing

As a webmaster, one of my objectives is to protect readers from bad links. If the program displays a red X next to an ad, I’ll dig deeper. If required, I’ll add that website to my Google filter. Ironically, Google calls this a competitive filter. People that I would consider my competition, I have added to Google Custom Search.

Even if you don’t use Google AdSense, you should think of the example above with National Geographic. Although I asked why this site was flagged, plenty of readers won’t. Your potential readers may assume the worst. However, sometimes that worst-case scenario is true.

The reason I know Google scans advertisement landing pages is I do work for a company that had their ad campaign stopped. The site had been hacked and four pages had malicious code. Even though that code has been removed, I proactively use the Finjan SecureBrowsing to scan their site pages. If I see something change from green to red, I’m on the phone to the developer. The same goes for my site.

Like McAfee’s SiteAdvisor, I think Finjan SecureBrowsing is an essential add-on to your browser. The two browser utilities complement each other and help identify sites with questionable code or business practices.

• Cost: Free
• URL: http://securebrowsing.finjan.com/
• Requirements: IE 6 or 7; Firefox 1.5 or 2.0
• Rating:★★★★☆