Amazon WorkSpaces Secure Browser
Amazon WorkSpaces Secure Browser — formerly named Amazon WorkSpaces Web — is a fully managed, Amazon Web Services hosted-browser service that gives users secure access to internal websites and SaaS applications by streaming an isolated browser session from AWS, rather than provisioning a desktop or installing a client on the user’s own device.
Key points
- Formerly Amazon WorkSpaces Web, renamed to sit alongside Amazon WorkSpaces and Amazon WorkSpaces Applications (Amazon AppStream 2.0) under one End User Computing family.
- Delivers only a browser, not a desktop or a streamed native application: the actual browser and the web content it renders run in AWS, and encrypted pixels are streamed to the user’s existing local web browser.
- No corporate data is persisted on the endpoint device. HTML, DOM content, downloads, browsing history, and cached credentials all stay inside the disposable, isolated cloud session; administrators can additionally restrict clipboard, printing, and file transfer to further reduce data-exfiltration risk.
- Session-based: each session is a fresh, disposable container created on connection and torn down afterward — there’s no persistent desktop image per user to build, patch, or store.
- Typical use cases: giving contractors and third parties time-limited, audited access to internal web apps; supporting BYOD so personal, unmanaged devices can reach corporate SaaS without a VPN or device-management agent; and providing controlled access for outsourced support or analytics staff who should never have data land on their own machine.
- Administrators configure a web portal, attach identity federation (e.g. SAML 2.0 or AWS IAM Identity Center (Single Sign-On)) for sign-in, and apply browser policies — allow/deny URL lists, toolbar controls, and download/copy-paste/print restrictions — per portal.
- Distinct from Amazon WorkSpaces: WorkSpaces provisions a full, persistent virtual desktop (Windows or Linux) per user that the customer must patch and that retains state between sessions; Secure Browser gives access only to specific web destinations, with no OS to manage and nothing that persists between sessions.
- Distinct from Amazon AppStream 2.0: AppStream streams whole native Windows applications (browser-based or not) running on AWS compute instances; WorkSpaces Secure Browser is scoped specifically to browser-based access to web destinations and requires no application packaging or fleet management.