The 44th IPP Symposium

Protecting Browsers in a Changing Threat Landscape

Michael Coates, Mozilla

The technologies available on the web are quickly advancing. Along with the new power of these technologies come new attack vectors that are leveraged to exploit users and websites. To combat these new threats, browsers have been enhanced with many new security capabilities that automatically protect the user or can be enabled by a web application to create a more secure browsing experience. During this discussion we will explore the changing threat landscape and discuss new security controls within browsers that help protect users against today's most prevalent attack techniques.

Michael Coates is the Director of Security Assurance at Mozilla. He is responsible for Mozilla's software and infrastructure security which includes Firefox, web applications, and supporting infrastructure. In this role he sets the security assurance strategy to integrate security into the development life cycle of all applications and ensures that the organization's infrastructure is designed to minimize risk and protect critical data. Throughout Michael's career he has performed hundreds of technical security assessments for financial, enterprise, and cellular customers worldwide.

Michael is also the Chairman of the OWASP board, an international non-profit organization focused on advancing and evangelizing the field of application security. In addition, he is the creator of OWASP AppSensor, a project dedicated to creating attack aware applications that leverage real time detection and response capabilities. Michael also maintains a popular security blog at michael-coates.blogspot.com

Michael holds a Master of Science degree in Computer, Information and Network Security from DePaul University and a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.