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Browser Isolation

Browser isolation protects client machines by rendering web content on a remote server and streaming only visual images to the end user, preventing malicious code from ever executing locally. It functions as an intermediary layer between the user and any website they visit.

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About this video

Every time a user visits a website, the browser downloads and executes code, including HTML markup and JavaScript, directly on the local machine. While this is standard behavior, it creates a meaningful attack surface, since malicious scripts embedded in a compromised or malicious site can run with the same access as any other code on the device. Browser isolation addresses this risk by introducing a remote intermediary server that sits between the client and the open web. When a user requests a website, that request is routed to the isolation server rather than going directly to the destination. The server fetches the web page, loads all associated code and scripts within its own environment, renders the fully composed visual output, and then streams that rendered image back to the user's device. The user sees and interacts with what appears to be a normal browsing experience, but no web code ever reaches or executes on their local machine. Interaction inputs from the user are sent back to the server, which updates the rendered image accordingly and continues the loop. Browser isolation can be deployed as a cloud-based subscription service or as an on-premises server, making it adaptable to different organizational environments. Because the approach is functionally similar to a proxy, it integrates naturally into existing network architectures. The result is a client machine that remains completely shielded from web-borne threats regardless of the content hosted on the sites being visited.

What you'll learn

What's covered

Browser Isolation

Key terms

Browser Isolation
A security technique that executes web browsing activity in an isolated environment to prevent malicious code from reaching the endpoint.
Proxy Server
An intermediary server that handles requests between clients and other servers, providing anonymity and content filtering.
Malware
Software specifically designed to disrupt, damage, or gain unauthorized access to a system.
Endpoint
Any device that connects to a network, including computers, smartphones, tablets, and IoT devices.
Server
A computer or program that provides services or resources to other devices, known as clients, over a network.

Topics

Browser Isolation Web Security Remote Browsing Threat Containment Cybersecurity Endpoint Protection

Transcript

Another way we can protect these client machines is through something called browser isolation.

How Typical Web Browsing Works

When we're using typical web browsing, what happens is the client machine goes and requests a web page. A web page has a certain level of code involved in it. Whether it's hypertext markup language, it has some markup in it, or maybe it's some sort of JavaScript which actually gets run as code on the application. But the key to all this is that it's actual code that's getting run and then displaying that information on the client's machine.

I'm on a demo machine and I've gone to the TechKnowSurge website. What I'm going to do is right-click here and say inspect. And you see the HTML coding here. The HTML coding is how things then get displayed on the page — it interprets this. And part of this interpretation, you can even see that there's some scripts that are part of this, so it's executing some scripts that are on this machine.

Now, certain sites when you go to them could have some malicious scripts in it and could have some malicious code, and that's problematic. So how do we isolate the client from the site that they want to visit?

Browser Isolation

Well, there is a solution for this. Browser isolation creates an intermediary step. It's very similar to a proxy, so essentially this acts as a proxy.

When the client makes the request, it goes to this server right here. And this server could be hosted — it could be some sort of service that you subscribe to, or maybe a server that you set up. And then it makes the request to the server, the www server, the web server. Then that HTML page with whatever scripts it has gets loaded onto the machine. But then, rather than that getting sent directly to your app like a regular proxy would do, instead it interprets it, it creates essentially what's going to be the image, and sends you the image, and then you see the image. So the code doesn't get executed on your machine.

And now if you're interacting, you're interacting with that image. It gets sent back to the machine, and then the loop continues. So you're just getting updated images of what this site is supposed to look like, essentially, is what is being displayed on your computer.

So that's browser isolation. What happens is that it's isolating the browser so that way the code doesn't actually make it to you. Instead, it's just images.

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