What does it mean: Sandbox

When you read the title, do you have visions of you as a young kid playing in a sandbox? It's OK, you can admit it, you are actually on the right track for this post. A sandbox in computing is somewhat like a sandbox in real life. An enclosed space that everything stays in. Ergo, a space where no program that you run in it can escape from it.

A sandbox is a space isolated from the rest of the computer that is used to run suspicious programs and code. From a malware standpoint, this is good. Because even if the program or code is malware, it cannot infect your PC.

I guess that there should be some visual explanation of this.

The sandbox is kind of like a jail inside the computer.

The diamond represents the program or code you are running in the sandbox.

 How is a sandbox like a jail?

The program can try all it wants, but it's not getting out of the sandbox.

So, this protects you from malware. This is because the program which may or may not be malware cannot reach any part of your machine.

At a security standpoint, this is a good thing. Because if a file or program is malicious, you can easily get rid of it without it doing anything to your computer. And if it is good or at least malware free, there is no hassle, drama, or crashes from a false positive like there is with antivirus software. This is actually why it is called a sandbox. Everything you put in the sandbox stays in the sandbox and does not come out.

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