With a sandbox, cybersecurity researchers and analysts can understand the way malware works and what can be done to stop it. Because of this, the sandbox must not have any access to critical infrastructure. Sometimes, this code could be a zero-day exploit where the malware’s effect and payload are unknown. The purpose of the sandbox is to execute malicious code and analyze it. The sandbox environment has its own network and often no physical connection to production resources. But in this case, it’s much more critical to ensure that no network resources are available to malware. In cybersecurity researchĬybersecurity researchers and analysts use their sandbox environment in a similar way. After code is tested, it’s deployed to production. Because the staging environment is the same as the production environment, code that runs without issues in staging should run without issues in production. This server is where quality assurance (QA) tests code before deploying to production. The staging server is designed to be an exact replica of production. Developers use this server to upload code and test it as the codebase changes. The development server is separated from the production environment but may still require basic network access. In development, a sandbox usually involves a development server and a staging server.

Making sure the sandbox is truly isolated and secure is more important in cybersecurity research than in software development because malware actively and aggressively scans the network for exploitable vulnerabilities. But sandboxes are critical for several scenarios in development, cybersecurity and research. In a standard business production environment, a sandbox might be misunderstood or considered a needless expense.

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