Most Remote Browser Isolation platforms answer a single question: how do we protect employees from the internet? MOAT turns the question around. It protects your web applications from the people who access them, and it constrains those people to exactly one destination.
What MOAT Actually Does
In MOAT mode, the remote browser is pinned to a single, specified web application for the life of the session. There is no general-purpose browser around it to wander out of. Concretely, users cannot:
- Open new tabs or windows—both the interface controls and the keyboard shortcuts are disabled.
- Type or paste a different address—there is no URL bar to begin with.
- Use back/forward history to step outside the application's own domain.
- Reach developer tools, view-source, or other lateral-movement footholds.
The result is an access surface so narrow that "what could the user do?" has a one-line answer: use this app, and nothing else.
Why "One App" Is a Security Primitive
Every additional capability you hand a user is something a reviewer, an auditor, or an attacker has to reason about. MOAT collapses that reasoning. When the only reachable destination is a single procurement portal or support console, whole categories of risk—credential phishing on look-alike sites, data exfiltration to personal cloud storage, accidental malware downloads—simply have no path. You aren't detecting misuse after the fact; you're removing the possibility.
Open RBI vs MOAT: Choosing the Right Mode
Open RBI is the right call when users genuinely need broad web access that just has to be safely isolated from their device—research teams, analysts, and general secure browsing.
MOAT is the right call when the job is defined by a single application: contractors using a procurement portal, BPO agents in a support console, customer-facing kiosks, and tightly regulated workflows where "stay in this app" is a compliance requirement, not a preference.
Governance Doesn't Get Weaker
Locking the browser down does not mean turning controls off. Session recording, data-loss controls, file scanning, usage metering and billing, and mTLS device binding all continue to apply in MOAT mode. You get the tightest possible application scope and the full evidence trail.
"We give contractors access to our procurement portal through MOAT. They can only use that portal. Nothing else is reachable—and we can prove it."
A Typical Rollout
Teams usually start MOAT with their highest-sensitivity third-party workflow, bind it to approved devices with mTLS, enable recording for the audit trail, and expand from there. Because the scope is so small, pilots are fast and the security story is easy to explain to a risk committee.