We strongly recommend that you use Mozilla, rather than Internet Explorer, as your default, general-purpose web browser. Internet Explorer will still be on systems we configure, but Mozilla will be the initial default browser in any of our standard computer configurations.

If you have not upgraded to Mozilla 1.7.5, mentioned in our previous announcement, please read:

http://depts.drew.edu/cns/news/2005020-mozilla-upgrade.php

Our Internet Explorer recommendation comes after repeated security problems. Penn State made the same decision in December as reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

http://chronicle.com/free/2004/12/2004121001n.htm

There have been numerous and repeated security problems with IE which have exposed computers to viruses, spyware and other malicious software. It presents a risk to your computer, your data, and the network as a whole. At this point, only a few sites work exclusively with Internet Explorer. A good rule of thumb is to use Mozilla as your browser, and only use IE when it's needed for a specific site. We strongly suggest that faculty and staff limit Internet Explorer use to sites that require IE and are needed for University business, and we recommend students not use IE as their default browser. If this situation improves in the future we will certainly revise our recommendation.

Instructional Technology Services will be offering a "Mozilla Email and Browsing" workshop on February 28th at 3pm in BC-1. You can register for the class at http://depts.drew.edu/its/stel/Classes/index.php and can call extension 3003 with any questions.

The University has licensed a comprehensive patch management solution called Patchlink through our relationship with Novell. This will, over time, allow us to get a handle on keeping all campus Windows systems up-to-date. This will take some time to implement. Patch managment will not completely address the Internet Explorer issue - there have been times when fully patched Windows systems still contained documented Internet Explorer security problems that Microsoft hadn't addressed.