Abstract: In various embodiments, applications that are configured to interact with the Internet in some way are executed in a restricted process with a reduced privilege level that can prohibit the application from accessing portions of an associated computing device. For example, in some embodiments, the restricted process can prohibit applications from read and write access to portions of a system's computer-readable media, such as the hard disk, that contains administrative data and settings information and user data and settings. In these embodiments, a special portion of the disk, termed a “containment zone”, is designated and used by applications in this restricted process.

Abstract: In various embodiments, applications that are configured to interact with the Internet in some way are executed in a restricted process with a reduced privilege level that can prohibit the application from accessing portions of an associated computing device. For example, in some embodiments, the restricted process can prohibit applications from read and write access to portions of a system's computer-readable media, such as the hard disk, that contains administrative data and settings information and user data and settings. In these embodiments, a special portion of the disk, termed a “containment zone”, is designated and used by applications in this restricted process.

Abstract: A method and system for locking down a local machine zone associated with a network browser is provided. Placing the local machine zone in a lockdown mode provides stricter security settings that are applied to active content attempting to publish within a local page open in the network browser. The stricter setting are provided in a new set of registry keys that correspond to the lockdown mode of the local machine zone. The original security settings remain unchanged so that other systems and applications functionality that depends on the original security settings remains unaffected for the local machine zone. A user may also selectively allow active content to render despite the local machine zone being locked down.