Businesses finally ditch Internet Explorer 6

More recent and secure versions of the browser adopted by enterprises

Businesses are finally ditching web browser Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) in favour of newer, more secure versions.

More than a third of Internet Explorer users were running IE6 in January 2010, according to web traffic analysis from security vendor Zscaler. By the end of the year, just 10 per cent remained using it.

IE6's persistence can be attributed to enterprises running legacy web applications, said Michael Sutton, vice president of security research at Zscaler.

In November 2010, IE8 became the most popular version of Microsoft's browser - months after the software titan had urged users to upgrade.

Microsoft also expects to release the next version of the browser - Internet Explorer 9 - imminently.

As Computing's extensive testing showed, IE9 includes a slicker JavaScript engine and sees Microsoft inch closer to web standards through its adoption of HTML5.

That could spur adoption of the new browser, and confine IE6 to web history.

IE6 has been a favourite target for cyber crooks. Vulnerabilities in the browser were exploited by those behind the Aurora attacks.

Over the course of 2010, the popularity of IE fell from 76 per cent of all web traffic at the start of the year to 64 per cent by the end of the year.

But competing browsers such as Chrome and Safari achieved only a modest increase in users, while web traffic from Firefox users actually fell.

Most of IE's decline came from people surfing from within third-party applications, according to Zscaler.

This shift was likely to encourage criminals to change their method of attack, paying less attention to browser vulnerabilities, said Sutton.

"Standalone user applications, social engineering attacks and the move to HTTPS all have the potential to introduce new threats," he said.