Microsoft is doing all it can to ensure that the next version of Internet Explorer is a secure as possible out of the box. The company is making some changes to its security zones to ensure that a user's computer is protected from attacks:

The current version, IE 6, has four classifications for Web sites -- Internet, local intranet, trusted and restricted -- which allow users to apply different security rules for how the browser interacts with groups of Web sites. The browser uses the settings to determine, for example, whether it will run ActiveX controls without first alerting the user.

The company has been working on improvements to prevent the browser from running malicious code in less restrictive security zones, wrote Microsoft engineers Vishu Gupta, Rob Franco and Venkat Kudulur in Microsoft's IE weblog.

This news article was written on December 13, 2005, quoting Computer World.