Obviously, the folks over at Microsoft would have you believe that IE 8 is the most secure browser yet, but does anyone else agree?  Is this just more Microsoft PR spin in an effort to squelch the laughter of security professionals who have gone so far as to recommend using text based browsers before using Internet Explorer?  The answer is "IE 8 is very secure" according to a recently released report from the folks over at NSS Labs. 

In a report released on March 12, 2009, NSS Labs' tests showed that Internet Explorer 8 (RC1) outperformed several other popular browsers (Safari, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and IE 7) in detecting malicious sites hosting 0-day attacks and web based malware.  The report also showed that 7% of the threats tested were blocked by all of the browsers and 11% were not blocked by any of them.

One of the out of the box features that was also included in IE 8 was native Clickjacking protection, being the first browser to incorporate such a feature (You can add it to Mozilla browsers via a plugin).  I have not seen any updated to some of the original stories that came out criticizing how Microsoft's Clickjacking protection works in their new browser, so it might be safe to assume that it works the same as it did during the beta and RC release phases.

If you have not seen the report, it is certainly an interesting read and one that will certainly add more fuel to the Browser Security Debate fires that are always raging.  The true test of IE 8's security will not just be in its ability to protect users from malware infected web sites, but also in patching its own vulnerabilities.  Of course, it is still up to us to install those updates.