Zero-Trust, Full Productivity: How Enterprise Browsers Can Secure the Public Sector

Internet browsers and web-based apps have become the primary ways knowledge workers carry out their daily tasks. This shift has unlocked significant potential for efficiency, but in the short term, it creates significant challenges for the public sector.

Government entities are required to maintain a zero-trust security architecture for all information systems. While the specifics can vary – the United States Department of Homeland Security - Cybersecurity Infrastructure & Security Agency, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the Department of Defense each have their own policies – all emphasize continuous verification, strict access control and monitoring across networks, users, devices and data. The overarching goal is to eliminate implicit trust within networks, adopting a "never trust, always verify" stance to strengthen defenses against cyber threats.

Consumer browsers like Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge do many things well, but they were designed for something other than enterprise-grade security. Providing a secure environment where all necessary tools can collaborate in a zero-trust manner while enabling organizational administrators to maintain visibility and control is simply not something they can handle. In theory, a comprehensive system integration process could solve this, but in practice, the complexity and scale make this path extremely difficult and costly for entities already pressed for budget and resources.

These security challenges would be difficult enough if they existed in a vacuum, but they don’t. Earlier this year, US Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks spoke about the importance of “decision advantage” in information systems – the result of combining software applications, streaming live data, and the like to help DOD personnel perform better in their roles. From the world’s most consequential geopolitical challenges to the comparatively mundane world of hiring and onboarding, a host of factors are at play, making it more important for all necessary tools to exist within a single, secure pane of glass. In this environment, siloed systems and legacy technologies are critical vulnerabilities, yet the need for this tight integration magnifies the agency’s security challenge.

Enter the enterprise browser. Built for the unique needs of large organizations, enterprise browsers create a powerful foundation for maintaining a vigilant zero-trust posture while addressing the practical user-level challenges that agencies encounter daily. In this way, they can fuel both security and productivity with minimal back-end disruption.

Comprehensive Security

As technology advances and public sector work becomes more complex and technical, employees increasingly need a wide array of applications at their fingertips. But as users and data interact within more environments, the security challenge increases rapidly. Each new app requires a robust accreditation and integration process to ensure it can operate in a zero-trust accredited architecture. And, of course, any tools that need to be accessed via the public internet inherently require organizations to give up some level of control.

Enterprise browsers offer a better path. By offering a single access point and control center for both native and web apps, these browsers offer zero-trust benefits at every level – user, device, network, application, data, and beyond.

At the user level, enterprise browsers strengthen identity security by offering enhanced multi-factor authentication (MFA) options, ensuring that users meet strict access protocols each time they log in. With secure access tokens and advanced logging capabilities, administrators can monitor and control access across apps more effectively, ensuring sensitive information and restricted functions can be accessed only by those authorized to do so.

Device security is another crucial priority, especially as more agencies look outside the Beltway to compete for the best talent. Enterprise browsers enable comprehensive remote management from any location, so, for some use cases, users don’t necessarily need to use managed devices to ensure their work environment is fully compliant. Fine-tuned firewalls can isolate apps from the device itself, while hardware identifiers and robust monitoring capabilities make it easy to track assets.

On the network side, enterprise browsers offer strict traffic encryption and segmentation controls that exceed standard consumer options. Network resilience features can provide added reliability by enforcing secure protocols across all applications, minimizing the risk of exposure to insecure network connections.

For application security, enterprise browsers consolidate mission-critical tools into a single location, enabling granular control over each app’s data access and sharing capabilities. At the same time, the apps remain isolated from one another so that sensitive data never makes its way into the wrong location. Just like their consumer counterparts, enterprise browsers are co-stable with the very latest web security standards, saving organizations from a comprehensive vetting process for each app.

Finally, enterprise browsers unlock significant data management and encryption benefits, preventing unauthorized sharing and centralizing data categorization to ensure only those with appropriate permissions can access it. Consumer browsers don’t offer anything like this—again, because they were not built for public sector use cases.

In short, enterprise browsers bring the precision and security necessary for high-stakes public sector work into a single, controlled environment.

Maintaining Resilience in an Unpredictable World

While security may be the north star for public sector information systems, it’s far from the only success factor. Government agencies face a daunting array of challenges as their work to serve citizens grows more complex.

According to Okta’s 2024 Businesses at Work report, companies with 2,000 or more employees deploy an average of 231 apps, a 10% increase from last year. As per a 2022 report from Harvard Business Review, knowledge workers switch between different apps on their desktops 1,200 times a day on average, resulting in four hours a week spent reorienting themselves within their workflow. Government agencies are not immune from these challenges. Enterprise browsers can go a long way toward solving them.

Bringing all applications into a common environment means they can be leveraged together on an unprecedented scale. Browser windows can be configured to include any combination of tools, helping users move faster and make the most of limited-screen real estate. They can also search for information across every database on their device with a single query, saving them from repetitive lookup processes. In addition, by serving as an organization’s interoperability layer, disparate applications can share data and context in a secure manner. This drives powerful benefits, from prompts that trigger the next step in a given workflow to eliminating tedious, error-prone data entry and copy-paste.

Together, these benefits – clearly defined processes, flexible use of data, easy access to mission-critical tools and beyond – drive the decision advantage that Assistant Secretary Hicks referred to in her speech. Imagine you’re a FEMA agent responding to a natural disaster or a security analyst deployed overseas to support a reconnaissance mission. Historically, agencies were forced to choose between sending them with a high-powered yet portable device with all the necessary apps (very expensive) or a suboptimal device with compromised access and limited support for complex workflows. With enterprise browsers, they can have the best of both worlds.

The benefits are endless….. By bringing apps together and supporting their integration into complex workflows, government organizations can protect their previous technology investments. Systems that may be outdated on their own can be modernized just by virtue of existing within the enterprise browser environment, where they can be complemented by newer tools. Meanwhile, the vigilant security protocols mean that adopting new apps goes from an overwhelming process to a formality. This is exactly the kind of innovation agencies need to maintain resilience in an unpredictable world.

With enterprise browsers, public sector agencies no longer have to choose between security and productivity. Instead, they gain a secure, integrated environment that enhances both – helping them respond with confidence to the demands of an ever-evolving digital world. The citizens they serve deserve nothing less.