As most of you know by now, I needed little incentive to switch from Micro$oft Internet Explorer (IE) to Mozilla Firefox and its brethren. If you haven't yet made the switch, last week's latest and perhaps scariest security flaw in IE should be a wake-up call. But don't just take it from me.

Last week the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) recommended using another web browser to avoid the inherent security flaws of IE (other options all but cripple the usability and convenience of the web browser). For those of you who haven't hear of US-CERT (I hadn't), it's "a partnership between the Department of Homeland Security and the public and private sectors... established to protect the nation's Internet infrastructure [and coordinate] defense[s] against and responses to cyber attacks across the nation." After US-CERT's assessment, Mozilla downloads almost doubled.

Additionally, a recent Microsoft-owned Slate article titled "Are the Browser Wars Back? How Mozilla's Firefox trumps Internet Explorer" details the many features and security benefits that Firefox offers over IE. Now's the time to switch...

Update: It seems that Micro$oft's fix for the recent security flaw is not complete. ZDNet reports that "This marks the third time in a month that Microsoft has had to play catch-up to researchers' public disclosures about insecurities in Internet Explorer" and that "They chose to address only one part of the problem." Although I'm glad that (for the most part) I don't have to deal with these security flaws, my biggest fear is that people who don't know any better will continue to put themselves and others at risk...