Security threats Toolkit

Configure Firefox's settings to strengthen security

Tags:
Security,
Mozilla,
Firefox

Michael Mullins Tech Republic

Published: 16 Jun 2005 12:20 BST

Despite its recent spate of security vulnerabilities, the Mozilla-based Firefox browser appears to be as popular as ever. While the browser's growth has somewhat slowed, Firefox continues to gain on Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Firefox's default installation is actually pretty secure. However, the number of Firefox users continues to increase, and such popularity often spells more attention from attackers. With so many people using Firefox, it's a good idea to add a standard layer of security to better protect your organisation's users.

Let's walk through Firefox's Options window (which you can access by going to Tools | Options) and look at some tweaks you can make to boost the security of the browser. Keep in mind that all of these suggested settings assume that the user login is for a single user and not shared among multiple users.

The Options window has five sections: General, Privacy, Web Features, Downloads, and Advanced. Because the General section focuses more on the browser's look and feel, we'll skip this one.

Privacy

History: This setting is self-explanatory. All you need to do is set it to a reasonable number of days. The default is nine days.
Saved Form Information: This is a handy feature for all single-user profiles; it lets the browser remember what you've typed in the past and automatically make suggestions. It's safe to enable the feature.
Saved Passwords: This setting is more of a gray area. You tell users to remember passwords -- should you allow their browsers to remember passwords as well? I recommend allowing this feature and setting the master password for workstations that don't leave your company area. If the system is a laptop, deselect the Remember Passwords option. That way, if someone steals the machine and accesses the account, the thief won't have access to every saved password a user has stored.
Download Manager History: There's no need to keep track of all of your downloads, so I suggest setting it to Remove Files From The Download Manager When Firefox Exits.
Cookies: This is a hotly debated subject. I recommend selecting Allow Sites To Set Cookies and choosing For The Originating Web Site Only. In addition, select the Until I Close Firefox option for how long the browser should store the cookies. With this last option, cookies only help you browse while you're using the machine, but they don't provide endless browsing habit information to cookie vendors.
Cache: For this setting, decide on a reasonable amount of disk space.