Is there a "most" secure browser out there? Doesn't appear so...

All of us like to think we use the safest web browser possible whether it's Chrome, Firefox, or any other of the many options. Each has their pros and cons, but is there one browser that can carry the unquestionable title of most secure? According to Skybox Security, the answer is: no.

What Makes A Browser Secure?
Even tackling this question is hard, as the security experts admitted, because how do you begin to measure security of a web browser? Skybox Security decided to take a few different metrics into account including fewest exposed vulnerabilities, most published (and patched) vulnerabilities, and the shortest time between security patches.

Based on the number of vulnerabilities published on each web browser since January 2013, Opera is the winner. Does this mean Opera's software developers are doing better jobs than the ones over in Microsoft or Google? Skybox Security doesn't think so; Opera's market share is around one percent so there's probably not a lot of interest in finding Opera vulnerabilities.

Own Up To The Vulnerabilities
The next category that Skybox assessed was the browser with the most published and fixed vulnerabilities. The assumption is that a vendor who publishes and fixes vulnerabilities would leave fewer attack vectors for hackers to exploit. Chrome and Internet Explorer come head-to-head for this one, but upon closer inspection you'll find out that vulnerabilities are still popping up in Internet Explorer 6 over 14 years after its release.

Finally, the cybersecurity company looked at the amount of time between security patches. This makes sense since browser vendors shouldn't take a long to fix vulnerabilities once they find out there's an issue. Chrome is the most responsive to security vulnerabilities and the obvious winner for this category. On average, Chrome releases a new version with security fixes every fifteen days while Internet Explorer and Firefox release security updates about once a month.