Microsoft Corp. has released test builds of new browser extensions that offer Windows Defender Application Guard support to both Chrome and Firefox browsers.

Previously available in Microsoft’s little-used Edge browser, Windows Defender Application Guard is a security tool that isolates browser sessions from the desktop in a virtual machine to prevent any malicious activity from reaching the desktop.

Aimed primarily at enterprise users, the service isolates enterprise-defined untrusted sites. Using the service, an administrator defines trusted web sites, cloud resources and internal networks, with everything not on the list considered to be untrusted.

When an employee visits an untrusted site, that site is opened in an isolated Hyper-V-enabled container, meaning that any malicious files on the site are unable to gain access to a corporate network.

Support for both Chrome and Firefox is coming via the next major update to Windows, with the test version now available via the Windows Insider Builds. The new support comes via a browser extension that can be installed via either browser, but when users visit an untrusted sit,e they are redirected to an isolated Microsoft Edge session.

“In the isolated Microsoft Edge session, the user can freely navigate to any site that has not been explicitly defined as trusted by their organization without any risk to the rest of system,” Microsoft’s Windows team explained in a blog post Friday. “With our upcoming dynamic switching capability, if the user tries to go to a trusted site while in an isolated Microsoft Edge session, the user is taken back to the default browser.”

The service is only as good as administrators making sure that websites listed on their trusted sites list are actually trustworthy, but even still, the feature is a positive in adding an extra layer of security to enterprise networks.

Although Microsoft is no doubt benevolently rolling out the service to other browsers, the fact that users visiting untrusted sites are redirected to Edge may just be an added bonus as well. With Edge’s poor market share, exposing users to it can only help in not only increasing user exposure to Microsoft’s browser but also raising its usage rates.

Image: Microsoft