Most enterprise work now occurs within the browser. SaaS purposes, identification suppliers, admin consoles, and AI instruments have made it the first interface for accessing knowledge and getting work executed.
But the browser stays peripheral to most safety architectures. Detection and investigation nonetheless give attention to endpoints, networks, and e mail, layers that sit across the browser, not inside it.
The result’s a rising disconnect. When employee-facing threats happen, safety groups typically battle to reply a fundamental query: what truly occurs within the browser?
That hole defines a complete class of recent assaults.
At Maintain Conscious, we’ve known as this a “protected haven” downside for attackers, the place the goal has now change into this central level of failure
Browser Assaults Seen in 2026 Leaving Little Conventional Proof
What makes browser-only assaults exhausting to cope with isn’t a single approach. It’s that a number of assault sorts all collapse into the identical visibility hole. We proceed to see these assaults into 2026:
ClickFix and UI-Pushed Social Engineering
Probably the most important browser-driven assault vector in 2025, customers are guided by pretend browser messages or prompts to repeat, paste, or submit delicate info themselves. No payload is delivered, no exploit fires, simply regular person actions that go away virtually no investigation path.
Malicious Extensions
Seemingly reliable extensions are put in deliberately after which quietly observe web page content material, intercept type enter, or exfiltrate knowledge. From an endpoint or community perspective, every thing seems to be regular browser habits. When questions come up later, there’s little document of what the extension truly did.
Man-in-the-Browser (and AitB, BitB, …) Assaults
These assaults abuse legitimate browser classes reasonably than exploiting programs. Credentials are entered accurately, MFA is authorised, and exercise seems approved. Logs affirm an actual person and an actual session, however not whether or not the browser interplay was manipulated or replayed.
HTML Smuggling
Malicious content material is assembled straight contained in the browser utilizing JavaScript, bypassing conventional obtain and inspection factors. The browser renders content material as anticipated, whereas essentially the most important steps by no means change into first-class safety occasions.
Why EDR, E-mail, and SASE Miss These Assaults by Design
This isn’t a failure of instruments or groups. It’s a consequence of what these programs have been designed to see, and what they weren’t.
EDR focuses on processes, recordsdata, and reminiscence on the endpoint. E-mail safety tracks supply, hyperlinks, and attachments. SASE and proxy applied sciences implement coverage on site visitors transferring throughout the community. Every can block identified unhealthy exercise, however none are constructed to know person interplay contained in the browser itself.
When the browser turns into the execution atmosphere, the place customers click on, paste, add, and authorize, each prevention and detection lose context. Actions could also be allowed or denied, however with out visibility into what truly occurred, controls change into blunt and investigations incomplete.
When browser interactions are seen, prevention turns into exact and defensible.
See how Maintain Conscious permits groups to make use of browser-level knowledge to dam dangerous habits and repeatedly refine coverage.
What Our Personal the Browser Analysis Reveals
This hole isn’t restricted to 1 browser or deployment mannequin.
As a part of Personal the Browser, a vendor-neutral analysis effort evaluating greater than 20 mainstream, enterprise, and AI-native browsers, we examined how browsers are literally secured and ruled in apply.
What stood out wasn’t an absence of controls; it was an absence of observable habits that these controls may study from.
Throughout client, enterprise, and rising AI-native browsers, insurance policies are extensively deployed. What’s lacking is structured visibility into how these insurance policies truly play out in actual person habits. With out that perception, prevention stays blunt, and insurance policies not often evolve or enhance.
AI Instruments and AI-Native Browsers Are Widening the Hole
AI is accelerating this downside by growing each the amount and subtlety of browser-based knowledge motion.
Instruments like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini normalize copying, pasting, importing, and summarizing delicate info straight within the browser. AI-native browsers, built-in assistants, and extensions streamline these actions even additional.
From a management standpoint, a lot of this exercise seems reliable. From a prevention standpoint, it’s troublesome to guage threat with out context.
Insurance policies can permit or block actions, however with out observability into how knowledge is getting used, groups can’t adapt controls to match actuality.
As AI-driven workflows change into routine, prevention that isn’t knowledgeable by browser-level habits shortly falls behind.
What Browser-Degree Observability Adjustments: Earlier than and After Incidents
When browser exercise turns into observable, safety groups don’t simply examine higher; they stop extra successfully.
Seeing how knowledge truly strikes by means of the browser permits groups to set smarter, extra focused controls: stopping dangerous actions in the intervening time they happen, whereas preserving proof when one thing does go improper.
Detection improves as a result of habits might be evaluated in context. Response improves as a result of incidents are reconstructable. Insurance policies enhance as a result of they’re knowledgeable by actual utilization, not assumptions.
This creates a suggestions loop: observability informs prevention, prevention reduces threat, and each incident, blocked, paused, or allowed, sharpens coverage over time.
That results in a easy query: if this class of assault occurred in your atmosphere right now, may you each stop it and clarify it? If not, that’s the hole Maintain Conscious is constructed to shut. See what browser-level visibility allows throughout prevention and response.
Written by Ryan Boerner, CEO of Maintain Conscious
Boerner, a pc engineer turned cybersecurity practitioner, started as a SOC analyst tackling community threats throughout Texas companies. Specializing in community and e mail safety, he later honed his experience at IBM and Darktrace, working with organizations of all sizes. Seeing a important hole between safety groups and workers—the place sturdy defenses nonetheless let threats by means of—he based Maintain Conscious to make the browser a cornerstone of enterprise safety.
Sponsored and written by Maintain Conscious.
