Bitdefender has unveiled a stand-alone beta of Safepay, a custom browser which uses a sandbox to protect your internet banking, shopping and other sensitive activities.

Launch the program and it runs full-screen in its own isolated environment. You can use its browser to navigate wherever you like, just as normal. And Bitdefender says the program secures your internet connection, helping to protect you on unsecured wifi hotspots, as well as using “state-of-art cloud technology to prevent fraud, phishing, and malware”.

The sandbox aims to prevent malware from tracking or interceptingAnd i what you’re doing online, and it worked well for us. We tested the system with various commercial keyloggers, screen capture tools and more, and it defeated them all.

The Sandbox prevents malware from intercepting your user names, passwords and more

Safepay also employs more fundamental tricks, though, like a virtual keyboard which pops up whenever you select a web page text box. Clicking on the keys, rather than typing, will help you to bypass any keyloggers which might have infected your system.

You won’t want to use Safepay all the time, of course (a very isolated browser with none of your favourite extensions isn’t a fun place to be). This really isn’t a problem, though, as it’s very easy to call the system up when necessary. Just clicking the “Switch to secure desktop” area at the top right of your desktop will launch the program, while a “Switch to desktop” area top left will return you to the regular desktop when your secure browsing is done.

Is Safepay useful? It worked well for us, and should run happily alongside other security suites, giving you an extra layer of protection when you’re working online.

Beware, though, there are some applications which aren’t compatible with Safepay. Unfortunately for Bitdefender fans, the program’s sole “known issue” currently is that “Safepay doesn`t work with any other security solution from Bitdefender”. If you want to try the beta then you’ll need to remove your existing Bitdefender package first.