What is Island?
Author: Paul Graham
Release Date: 07/12/2023
With all my experience in Secure Web Gateways, CASBs and SASE there was always one missing piece of the puzzle and that was the reliance on third party public browsers when interacting with the web or Cloud apps.
I recall a time when companies were extremely strict on browser usage within an organisation but I have personally seen this strictness reduce over time to the point where most companies I engage with will allow me to use pretty much any browser I wish to perform my duties.
However, despite all of the security tooling that can exist on a machine, the browser itself should still be treated as a risk and be fully secured. This is evident by way of a number of Next Gen Secure Gateway providers now offering remote browser isolation as additional paid for features, as that required buffer and the risk of users accessing resources directly from their machine browser is quite prevalent.
This is where Island comes in.
What is Island?
Island is a standalone secure Enterprise browser that is built incorporating the open-source Chromium project that the majority of all major browsers are based off of and it provides fine-grain policy control over every facet of a user’s interaction with a web application giving the enterprise limitless visibility, control, and compliance with their most critical applications.
It is a secure Enterprise browser that is installed onto a user's endpoint, and through this allows for full control of everything happening inside the browser whilst also providing full visibility of user activity. And when I say full visibility here, it isn't able to collect just logs or events showing what a user has been doing, or send these to a SIEM solution, that is a given, but it can take actual screenshots and trace activity right down to what a user has been clicking on - and even this can be controlled in relation to what gets logged and what doesn't.
On the policy side, these are hyper-granular in relation to what can be controlled at the user behaviour, user identity and permissions, app and data transfer level and not just the usual policies within these as it is driven by Zero Trust Design hence you can link identity, device, and application through the browser, making zero trust native to your work environment.
Features include critical security tools embedded into the browser like native (not remote) browser isolation, automatic phishing protection, & web filtering and the controls are so granular, that you can even disallow coded elements on pages such as login buttons, etc.
At a high level, the architecture is non-complex.
At a high level, the architecture is non-complex.
How does Island work?
The user has the Island browser installed on their machine (there are various enrolment methods and Identity Management integrations such as Okta to make this simple).
The Island Browser is talking to Island Management Cloud, this is where management would be enacted via the Island Management Console and policies can then be applied to the browser.
The user now connects to internet resources and apps via the Island browser. When they do so, a more secure environment is now provided for them. Their behaviour and activity is controlled via any policies that have been applied to them individually or via RBAC methods. These security features can include DLP, Data Sharing Controls,, Malicious Content Protection and File Inspection.
The Island Browser is also feeding back valuable data to the administration plane to give full visibility into the user's activity as well as any alerts generated, these can be shipped out to SIEM solutions such as Splunk.
Lastly, the Island Browser also supports Island Private Access which is an optional module that enables secure access to private web apps or resources that are not visible to the public Internet.
So consider Island to be the last mile of security when it comes to fully securing a user and their online activities from source to destination and back again and to me this solution is a must for any organisation.
More Resources like this one:
Island Browser Explained in 60 Seconds —
Redefining the Browser for the Enterprise.
with this Essential Capabilities Datasheet.
