Deployment:Deploying Firefox

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Deploying Firefox

Many people are using Firefox at home, and many also want to use it at work or see it on public computers such as at libraries or Internet Cafes. This article provides links and references to issues that might come up when considering or executing a Firefox deployment plan. It describes a wide variety of tools and features available that can be to deploy Firefox and centrally manage and control the use of Firefox in enterprise, business, education, and a variety of large and small organizational settings.

The Rational for Deploying Firefox inside Organizations and Institutions

• [This EWeek Article ] By Don Reisinger, July 20, 2009, does a good job of analyzing the major reason why companies have reason to consider Firefox deployment to their employees.

These are also reasons we have heard in the past from a variety of sources:

• Concerns about security is a strategic reason some organizations move to Firefox exclusively, or set up support support for multiple browsers.

• Many users choose Firefox when it is offered inside their organization, or go around IT policies because it makes these users more efficient and more productive in accessing information on the web. They take advantage of firefox features such as tab browsing, rss feeds, and integrated search to get more done, faster. With the amount of time that "knowledge workers" spend using a browser each day these productivity increases can add up to be significant to the bottom line and the competitiveness of a company.

• Some organization also chose Firefox as a tool to assist in ensuring development of internal applications and documents comply with web standards, and that the organizations do not get locked into proprietarty document formats that could become difficult or costly to support. If your applications and content works in Firefox its highly likely they will work in other browsers, and open up possibilities that ensure your internal organizational content is searchable and useful with other applications that support standards.

• International organizations, and organizations that support multiple Operating Systems also like Firefox because its a way to standardize the browser for all their users. If you have an organization where engineering teams might use Linux or Unix Systems, Design and Web Development Teams using Mac, and Business Teams using Windows Firefox is the one browser that can be used across the company, and its available in over 70 languages.

• Firefox can also be customized and extended to meet specific needs of an organization by creating addon extensions or building on the Firefox platform or leverage existing addons that improve productivity. http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9175084/10_must_have_Firefox_extensions_for_business has some examples of productivity improvement addons.

Marketshare in the Enterprise and Business

• This point is often missed in the press but it is interesting to note that Firefox market share in corporate environments appears to be pretty closely tracking with the increased use of Firefox in the general internet population. Firefox use inside many organization often starts with IT, web development teams, and engineering departments and then spreads to other departments and individual users.

Feb. 2010

Findings in this survey indidate 50% of enterprise PC have Firefox installed, and 31% of users run both IE and Firefox. http://exo-blog.blogspot.com/2010/02/ies-enterprise-resiliency-one.html

Jan. 2010

Another couple of articles and research than can be viewed in the glass 20% full/glass 80% empty context, especially in the conclusions that are drawn. But the data is interesting.

• http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9143918/Microsoft_IE_s_downfall_far_fetched_says_researcher
• http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/01/enterprises-more-likely-to-shun-firefox-than-ie.ars

The data itself follows previous findings:

• ~20% of enterprise PCs have firefox installed

Then it adds some interesting findings that

• Almost 50% of the monitored PCs run Firefox - or I think this says 50% of usage might be attributed to Firefox.

This might be an indicator that were browsers and web use is a key part of daily work inside the enterprise, Firefox is in higher relative use. The study suggests two things that are worth more research. Its not only how many PC Firefox is installed on inside the enterprise, its which PCs Firefox is installed on. Anecdotal we hear reports of Firefox use high in IT, Web Development, and Technology areas of companies. That would match these findings.

November 2009

It is reported that IBM will make Firefox the default inhouse browser by the 2nd quarter of 2010. http://www.spreadfirefox.com/node/5406

April 2009

Forester Study Finds Firefox Adoption grows 1.3% to 18.2% in the second half of 2008. That's just 2% less that NetApplications reported for general Firefox adoption in the overall browser market, and the 1.3% increase over the period is faster than the 1.2% increase in Firefox users that NetApplications reported over the same period. http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Web-Services-Web-20-and-SOA/Microsoft-IE-Tops-in-Enterprise-Firefox-and-Chrome-Gaining-Forrester-490377/ http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=1

July 06

Marketshare among IT workers visiting Janco http://www.e-janco.com/browser.htm

October 30, 2006

The New Browser Wars: Firefox vs. Internet Explorer
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=13200C4PLUMO "Jupiter survey showed that 26 percent of companies with more than 250 employees allowed their employees to install Firefox in 2005. By 2006, that number had jumped to 44 percent."

February 13, 2006

Deployments at IBM, Boeing and Fidelity Investments http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/software/story/0,10801,108622p3,00.html http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;453717301;fp;2;fpid;2 14% of Surveyed IT Managers had multi browser deployments going on in there companies.

March 22, 2005

Firefox explorers

This expansive article covers the advantages of using open source and Firefox software for business. When Bill Robertson decided last year to switch 450 workers and 100 desktops at De Bortoli Wines to the open source Firefox web browser, he had the company's future in mind. http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2005/03/21/1111253920087.html?oneclick=true

Security

Independent Security Research teams such as US-CERT (US Dept. of Homeland Security) have for several years suggested supporting and using Firefox and other browsers as protection measure and response to critical problems with Internet Explorer. Here are a variety of references:

June 2004 https://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/713878

Here is an excerpt from that article:

Use a different web browser

There are a number of significant vulnerabilities in technologies related to the IE domain/zone security model, trust in and access to the local file system (Local Machine Zone), the Dynamic HTML (DHTML) document object model (in particular, proprietary DHTML features), the HTML Help system, MIME type determination, the graphical user interface (GUI), and ActiveX. These technologies are implemented as operating system components that are used by IE and many other programs to provide web browser functionality. These components are integrated into Windows to such an extent that vulnerabilities in IE frequently provide an attacker significant access to the operating system.

http://www.cert.org/tech_tips/securing_browser/
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/05/scitech/pcanswer/main627500.shtml
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-5250697.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6746-2004Jun25.html

http://www.sans.org/top20/?portal=1563ee22b1a8bd138f0f420caec8d02c -- "...Exploit code for many of the critical Internet Explorer flaws are publicly available. In addition, Internet Explorer has been leveraged to exploit vulnerabilities in other core Windows components such as HTML Help and Graphics Rendering Engine. Vulnerabilities in ActiveX controls installed by Microsoft or other vendor software are also being exploited via Internet Explorer... "How to Protect against These Vulnerabilities?... Consider using other browsers such as Mozilla Firefox that do not support ActiveX technology...."

November 6, 2006 - Attackers dig into [IE] zero-day flaw
http://news.com.com/Attackers+dig+into+zero-day+flaw/2100-1002_3-6133028.html

03 Jan 2006 Open source's speed, Firefox's security wows Fidelity http://searchopensource.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid39_gci1155599,00.html
"The Mozilla Firefox browser was an eye-opener, added Mike Askew, who also works in the technology center. A head-to-head comparison of Firefox and Internet Explorer showed that both had about the same level of security vulnerability, but the time needed to fix vulnerabilities in Firefox was much less, Askew said. That experience led Fidelity to look at open source more intently." --also prediction of Open Source used in 25% of business software investments by 2010

Evaluating days of Vulnerability as the best metric for assessing risk in browsers.

Several independent studies have shown that Firefox keeps users at risk of serious browser exploits a smaller amount of time than with Internet Explorer. For more than 3 years Mozilla and Firefox have a consistent track record for delivering security fixes faster than other browser vendors and reducing the risk to users.

2006

Internet Explorer Unsafe for 284 Days in 2006 v. 9 days for Firefox, or 98 of actual exposure days where known exploits were running to zero for Firefox

"...For a total 284 days in 2006 (or more than nine months out of the year), exploit code for known, unpatched critical flaws in pre-IE7 versions of the browser was publicly available on the Internet. Likewise, there were at least 98 days last year in which no software fixes from Microsoft were available to fix IE flaws that criminals were actively using to steal personal and financial data from users."

In contrast, Internet Explorer's closest competitor in terms of market share -- Mozilla's Firefox browser -- experienced a single period lasting just nine days last year in which exploit code for a serious security hole was posted online before Mozilla shipped a patch to remedy the problem."

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2007/01/internet_explorer_unsafe_for_2.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/technology/daily/graphics/index20070104.html Mozilla's Firefox browser -- experienced a single period lasting just nine days last year in which exploit code for a serious security hole was posted online before Mozilla shipped a patch to remedy the problem.

2005

Mozilla averaged about 21 days before it issued fixes for flaws in Firefox, compared with the 135 days it took for Microsoft to address problems in Internet Explorer. Web Browser Vulnerabilities Calendar Click the image for a look at the length of time Firefox and IE were vulnerable to known flaws in 2005.

For at least 38 days in 2005, IE was vulnerable to unpatched critical security flaws that were being exploited actively by viruses, worms and spyware. For at least 256 days last year, Internet Explorer contained unpatched vulnerabilities where the exploit method had been publicly disclosed but was not necessarily being used. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2006/02/2005_patch_times_for_firefox_a.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/technology/interactives/browsers/

2004

A Year Of Bugs http://bcheck.scanit.be/bcheck/page.php?name=STATS2004&page=1

Executive Summary http://bcheck.scanit.be/bcheck/page.php?name=STATS2004&page=5 004 was pretty hard for Internet Explorer users. The domination of Internet Explorer made it a preferred target for both malware writers and security researchers, creating a steady stream of vulnerabilities. Windows XP Service Pack 2 released on August 9, 2004 did not seem to alter this trend.

In 2004 Mozilla had the shortest "exposure period" of the three browsers compared. The growing popularity of Mozilla and Firefox was at least to some extent due to better security it currently provides to its users. However as Mozilla browsers become more common they are bound to attract attention of malware writers. It would be interesting to see how well Mozilla will do security-wise when its user base approaches that of Internet Explorer.

http://bcheck.scanit.be/bcheck/page.php?name=stats2004 http://bcheck.scanit.be/bcheck/page.php?name=STATS2004&page=3 http://bcheck.scanit.be/bcheck/page.php?name=STATS2004&page=4

Security Features

Datamation’s readers have taken notice, choosing Firefox – narrowly – to win its Product of the Year award in the Anti-Spam category.

http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/article.php/3662741

There is also a good summary of specific features in Firefox that help to make browsing safter at http://en.flossmanuals.net/Firefox/FirefoxSecurityFeatures

Extending and Customizing Firefox for Enhanced Productivity

You can control thousands of Firefox settings, and extend Firefox with additional Addons to provide the best web experience for your users.

To see the many settings that can be customized in Firefox type:

   about:config

in the location bar of the browser. Documentation about each of these preferences is available from a wide variety of sources. One of the best may be at the mozdev site

The Very Best Firefox Extensions for Entrepreneurs article recommend several Firefox addons that might be useful for increasing productivity of users inside large organizations.

A variety of tools are also available to assist in making changes to the browser and repackaging these changes before deploying to your users. More information on those tools is provided below

Firefox Customization (CCK and Repackaging Tools)

The Firefox Client Customization Kit (CCK) was designed as a successor to two Netscape products, CCK, and Mission Control Desktop (MCD). These two products were used to customize Netscape browsers for deployment for ISPs (CCK) and enterprises (MCD).

The goal of the Firefox CCK is to provide an extension that can be deployed with Firefox that does most basic customizations.

More information is available at http://www.mozilla.org/projects/cck/firefox.

Information on the release repackaging tool is available here http://benjamin.smedbergs.us/release-repackager/

Centralized Settings Management and Control

The core technology in Firefox and Thunderbird contains a feature called "Mission Control Desktop/Auto Config" that can be used to centrally manage Browser and Mail configuration settings for the client software that is deployed across an organization. The source code is here:

http://mxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/source/mozilla/extensions/pref/autoconfig/src/

The code is still in use by Thunderbird, and still probably works for Firefox, although testing would be needed to confirm. If anyone has tested please update with status here.

More documentation on this feature can be found at:

• http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/MCD%2C_Mission_Control_Desktop_AKA_AutoConfig
• http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Automatic_Mozilla_Configurator:Locked_config_settings

Most of the controls are carried out via the preference system. An overview of the this system can be found at

• http://www.mozilla.org/catalog/end-user/customizing/briefprefs.html
• http://www.xulplanet.com/tutorials/xulqa/q_prefs.html

Extensive lists of preferences can be found at:

• http://preferential.mozdev.org/preferences.html

Some customization ideas can be found here

• http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/tips

This article also talks about controlling other features such as bookmarks and history and an approach to "Securing Mozilla in the Public Library":

• http://tln.lib.mi.us/~amutch/pro/mozilla/

Installer and Packaging Options

Large Oranizations have a variety of software deployment systems. In most cases the Firefox installation package can be wrapped inside these deployment systems. Some groups have packaged the firefox installer inside a MSI package to do their deployments. The firefox installation program can be wrapped inside these deployment systems. Two installer options are valuable in these set ups.

FirefoxSetup.exe /ms (for mode-silent)

or

FirefoxSetup.exe /ma (auto-mode, hands-free but visible)

Another installation option ( /ira ) might be useful in these scenarios as it keeps the program from running after the install has completed.

Some changes were made in Firefox 2 to modify installer command line options. Information on those changes is here: http://wiki.mozilla.org/Installer:Command_Line_Arguments

A project is also underway to allow packaging of custom versions of Firefox. See http://byob.mozilla.com/ for more information

Deployment Tools

Automated deployment of Firefox with extensions, themes, and pre-configuration http://firefox.dbltree.com/ (no longer maintained)

Firefox ADM (Active Directory deployment) Manage Firefox settings through Group Policy and Active Directory. http://homepages.ed.ac.uk/mcs/FirefoxADM/Readme.htm

Software Update

Mozilla offers automated updates of security patches and bug fixes for Firefox and Thunderbird though its software update system. You can choose to use this system or modify the firefox configuration to turn software updates off and gain more control over the update process. An overview of the software update system can be found at http://wiki.mozilla.org/Software_Update

Companies

List of companies and contacts who can help with your evaluation, pilot projects, and deployment of Firefox or Thunderbird across your organization is provided below.

Epidata Consulting - Buenos Aires, Argentina
Wayforth - London, UK
Browser Garage - Mountain View, CA
Kaply Consulting - Austin, TX - contact Michael Kaply

We are also interested in hearing about your success stories or problems at partners@mozilla.org

Licensing/Distribution Terms and Conditions

The Firefox End User License can be found here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/legal/eula/

and more information about logo and trademark use can be found here: http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/trademarks/

United States Export Control Information

Companies looking to provide Mozilla Software outside the United States often ask about Export Control provisions to comply with US laws and regulations.

The Export Notice can be found at http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/security/export-notice

In 2002, NSS 3.4 requested a CCATS commodity classification id G023895 to make it easier for companies to file when they include NSS or Mozilla Applications such as Firefox which use NSS. http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/pki/nss/nss-3.4/nss-3.4-algorithms.html This CCATS filing covered all the crypto operations used in the Mozilla code base, including SSL and S/MIME.

More recent versions of NSS have not filed for further CCATS numbers, instead claiming a TSU exemption via 740.13(3) of the EAR because the NSS crypto code is "publicly available" and the binaries are built from purely open source software.

NB : the associated ECCN for software packages that include NSS is likely to be 5D002.c.1 (TSU unrestricted, via EAR 740.13(e)). One could theoretically request a review of a specific set of binaries for authorization under 5D992.b.1 ("No License Required", but it's not known whether anyone has. See Frank Hecker's Jan 2005 post: http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/security/export-notice )

More information on exporting products made from Open Source can be found at https://www.bis.doc.gov/encryption/enc.htm and http://www.access.gpo.gov/bis/ear/ear_data.html (Part 740. Section §740.13(e) is on page 30 of the PDF).

We strongly caution you not to act on your personal reading of export regulations. They are complex and loaded with history, precedent, and context which often require interpretation from a qualified attorney.

Most questions about features provided by Mozilla's security library are contained in this document: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/pki/nss/nss-3.9/nss-3.9-algorithms.html

Other Links

Collection of other random thoughts, press, and other articles on Firefox Deployments in Enterprise and Large Organizations

http://del.icio.us/chofmann/enterprise
http://del.icio.us/chofmann/firefox-deployments
http://mozillaenterprise.mozdev.org/information.html
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox:1.5_Institutional_Deployment
http://www.sanduskycomputers.com/downloads/fxcorp/
http://fxcorp.sanduskycomputers.com/
http://corporatefirefox.blogspot.com/
http://firefox.dbltree.com/
http://varun21.blogspot.com/
http://www.frontmotion.com/Firefox/