Internet Explorer security zones

Internet Explorer lets the user specify the level of trust he/she has for a particular website, by giving the user the ability to specify which security zone the site fits in. This is important because local sites (Intranet sites for example) can be trustworthy while an external site residing on the Internet should be first of all regarded with a needed degree of suspicion. There can be a big difference amongst the level of trust user has towards a particular site, and new pages can always be regarded as suspicious, or in the opposite situation, a web site that is very familiar to you can be trusted completely. Therefore, Internet Explorer security is divided into 4 major zones that will be explained below. The first zone is the Internet zone. This zone contains the majority of web pages, and it also automatically contains all internet sites that have not been placed by the user, under other zones. This is why this zone should be enforced with maximal security. However, a too high degree of security may block certain otherwise useful features of the web pages visited, and therefore they may do more harm than good. This is why Internet zone in Internet Explorer is set by default to Medium, an option that allows loading of certain scripts and ActiveX objects, but the user is usually prompted for decision whether to run or not such scripts.

The second zone is the Intranet zone, and here the company sites residing on the Intranet are to be placed. These usually sites benefit from a high degree of trust, but anyway the security level for this option is also configurable. Since most users do not have access to such Intranet sites, let's focus more on the remaining two zones. The next zone is named Trusted Sites, and it does exactly what the name tells - it automatically assigns full trust to all sites listed here. The user must be careful before placing a website into this area, as this will override the default security assigned to Internet sites and will allow the trusted site to execute whatever kind of content is provided. On the contrary, the Restricted Sites zone is used to block all harmful content on certain sites, so here we should add such sites that are potentially dangerous for our computer, and here is the place to add a site that you believe may be dangerous, before actually visiting it for the first time.

Please note that security zones can be configured with custom levels - by clicking on the Custom Level button, user is provided with a list of individually configurable elements that can be set in order to obtain the needed security functionality as desired by the user. Finally, to reach the Security options in Internet Explorer, you need to go to the Tools-Internet Options, and switch to the Security tab.