ITG

How to add Trusted Sites to Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer includes five predefined zones:

  • Internet
  • Local Intranet
  • Trusted Sites
  • Restricted Sites
  • My Computer

Users can uses these zones to easily provide the appropriate level of security for the various types of Web content that they are likely to encounter. For example, since a user may fully trust the sites on their institution's intranet, they would set the Local intranet zone to a low level of security. That same user may not feel as confident about sites on the Internet, so they can assign a higher level of security to the entire Internet zone. This higher security level prevents users from running active content and downloading code to their computers.

If there are specific websites that you trust, you can place individual URLs or entire domains in the Trusted sites zone. To do this, follow these steps:

  1. In Internet Explorer, click Tools, click Internet Options, and then click the Security tab.
  2. In the Select a Web content zone to specify its current security settings box, click Trusted Sites, and then click Sites.
  3. If you want to add sites that do not require an encrypted channel, click to clear the Require server verification (https:) for all sites in this zone check box.
  4. In the Add this Web site to the zone box, type the URL of a site that you trust, and then click Add.
  5. Repeat these steps for each site that you want to add to the zone.
  6. Click OK two times to accept the changes and return to Internet Explorer.

Note Add any sites that you trust not to take malicious action on your system. Two in particular that you may want to add are *.windowsupdate.microsoft.com and *.update.microsoft.com. These are the sites that will host the update, and it requires an ActiveX Control to install the update.