Are you sure your antivirus software is sufficient to protect your computer? Are you a regular target to viruses and other malware? Then wait not, it’s time to have an extra security layer in your computer. So this extra layer should be so good that hardly any of these malware can penetrate though it, isn’t it! So here’s the best solution for you and that’s ‘Sandboxing’.
What Is Meant By Sandboxing :
Sandbox is that virtual environment in your computer which can contain and run all the malicious applications without your system getting affected. A sandbox, in normal terms, is a wooden box of sand children play with and is specially designed to confine sand within the layout of the box. If not done so, there are umpteen chances the sand gets spread all over the place making a big mess.
This same concept is applied in computing to confine all the malware of your computer to a set location. Sandboxing enables you to run malicious software, websites and games once they are placed into your computer’s sandbox; and you wouldn’t notice a glitch. Now that you know what a sandbox can do, you can test or analyze suspicious software or code in a rather protected atmosphere.
Sandbox and Security:
By now you must have understood that a sandbox is a virtual controlled atmosphere. Let’s now talk about the how-it-does-so part. First of all, sandboxing a piece of code or an application means, providing it access to the minimum resources it requires thereby denying any other resource permissions it requests for, which it may abuse.
Hence the behavior of this sandboxed application can completely be monitored. During the entire process, the virus (if at all any) is confined to that box and can’t infect the host computer.
For instance, let’s consider the browser you are viewing this page from. If at all this browser is sandboxed, all the websites you visit run inside the sandbox. These websites are then confined to run only within your browser without any access to other resources, say your webcam. Simply, they can’t get to your webcam or your local computer files or your USB stick. They are totally confined.
Now consider you haven’t sandboxed this particular browser, if at all now you enter some malicious website it is the same as installing a virus knowingly. Surely your antivirus software will offer the first line of defense but had it not been updated to that virus signature, Boom! You are in trouble.
Recently many programs come with their own sandbox. For the above mentioned example it really isn’t that easy for malware to intrude into your system because it first has to cross the browser’s sandbox. Google Chrome and Internet Explorer have their own sandboxing techniques employed which alert you in times you are browsing through malicious content.
Not just browsers, even many other applications like the PDFs, Word Processing Documents, Mobile Apps, Browser plug-ins all have their own sandbox. But this sums up only to be one layer of security and to stay safe its better you have multiple layers of them. You can learn the art of sandboxing your programs in our coming articles.
The Bottom Line:
To stay safe online and to protect your personal data, it is must that you have an updated antivirus in your computer. Few antivirus programs like Comodo Internet Security include sandboxing. Like mentioned, it is just one layer of security and for sound protection you need many more of those layers.
‘Whatever happens in the sandbox stays within the sandbox’.