Avast! antivirus is a pretty no-nonsense utility. It pops up once a day to tell me it’s updated its virus definitions, and every so often to let me know there’s a new version available. It’s never crashed and I’ve never gotten a virus while using it. I turned off the perky voice notification when they changed it because it was a little disconcerting. I never really considered the possibilities of its multilingual interface, since I just use it in English.
But it turns out avast! has a sense of humor, as evidenced by today’s extra pop-up. Who knew?
Now, my ship be secure.
CUPERTINO, Calif., Sept. 08, 2010 /PRNewswire/ – Trend Micro Incorporated, a global leader in the fight against cybercrime, today released new security software that provides state-of-the-art protection for consumers’ data, delivered with optimal performance and ease-of-use. Trend Micro’s Titanium Security 2011 stops viruses, spyware, and phishing attacks before they reach you, your family or home office PC.
Titanium 2011 utilizes a revolutionary cloud-client strategy that combines cloud-based web, email, and file reputation services with Trend Micro’s Smart Scanning technology for real-time, up-to-date protection against today’s sophisticated threats. The new three-product family includes Titanium™ Antivirus+, Titanium™ Internet Security, and Titanium™ Maximum Security. Each provides customers with better performing, easiest-to-use security software that ensures ultimate protection.
Smarter Protection
Because a portion of the application resides on Trend Micro’s own servers, Titanium 2011 is able to stop threats before they can reach a protected PC. This partially cloud-based architecture also lightens the protected computer’s processing, memory, and storage load, resulting in significant performance gains. In real world test scenarios, early independent testing has already determined that Titanium is a leader in protection and performance and is designed to stop Internet malware proactively.
“Titanium 2011 is an all-around win for consumers,” said Carol Carpenter, executive general manager for the Consumer and Small Business units at Trend Micro. “Our new technology takes family and PC protection to entirely new heights and is the most effective way to challenge the explosion of real world online threats that we expect will continue indefinitely. It’s a major upgrade for our customers, for Trend Micro and for the industry.”
Titanium uses Trend Micro’s Smart Scan engine to deliver immediate protection directly from the Internet cloud. By accessing Trend Micro’s continually updated reputation databases over the Internet, response to threats is significantly faster than with conventional security software. Such applications require large periodic downloads of malware signatures that provide less effective protection than Titanium 2011’s access to live reputation data.
The Smart Scan engine also works with local indexes and caches, as well as heuristics and behavior monitoring technologies, all of which reside on the customer’s PC, so the user’s data is still protected when the PC is offline. This powerful combination fights threats both in the cloud and on the local machine.
Trend Micro Titanium 2011 also takes advantage of the Trend Micro™ Smart Protection Network™ infrastructure that operates discreetly in the background, analyzing files and Internet activities for threats. There is no need for users to worry about keeping a large database of protection signatures continually updated on the local PC hard drive, since the reputation services used by Titanium Security 2011 are located in the cloud. This is a completely new way to protect users’ data.
Previous security applications from Trend Micro and its competitors store threat information on the protected computer itself. Besides requiring the machine to actually “touch” an infected site in order to evaluate the threat, it also required frequent updates of the threat database.
A recently conducted set of tests by NSS Labs demonstrates the superior protection of Titanium™. In the tests, Titanium™ is rated #1 in catching malware before it executes on a user’s computer and #1 in stopping zero hour malware. The complete findings will be available in an upcoming report from NSS Labs (http://www.nsslabs.com).
Better Performance
In designing Titanium 2011, Trend Micro engineers focused not only on providing better protection, but also on increased performance, resulting in a dramatically thinner application that is not only smaller in size but also lighter in CPU and memory usage.
“The buyers of security software are torn between the need to be protected and the need to maintain adequate performance,” said Rob Enderle Principal Analyst for the Enderle Group. “These conflicting needs often have them at war with their security solution and under protected. Titanium 2011 from Trend Micro is the first product to deeply embrace both needs to provide a security solution that actually may increase performance removing this painful conflict,” Rob Enderle, Principal Analyst, Enderle Group.
Titanium 2011 transforms the customer experience across a number of key benchmarks, including faster scan times, as well as lower memory and CPU usage, balancing thoroughness with efficiency. Faster boot time, quicker file copying, a smaller installer size, and full scan optimization after initial installment are other enhancements.
“The threat landscape is becoming more sophisticated and prolific – and Titanium meets the challenge,” said Brook Stein, senior product manager for Trend Micro. “Customers have told us they were tired of security software slowing their computers down, but weren’t willing to sacrifice the quality of protection. Our answer is Titanium 2011, the most robust protective system we have ever built and by far the easiest to use.”
Easier To Use
Using a revamped, widget-like interface, Titanium 2011 users can easily navigate and control settings and reports. The software also helps parents keep their children safe from cyber criminals and inappropriate content when they go online and can fight spam and other unsolicited commercial e-mail.
In all three versions, Titanium 2011 is:
• Light on system resources so PCs can run faster
• Designed to be easy-to-use and understand with simple screens and graphical reports
• Uses less than half the disk space and memory of other security products
Configuration is simple, since default settings are optimized for each user right out of the box and can be easily modified. Intuitive security reports with simple screens and graphs provide users with everything they need to understand their computer’s security status. The security dashboard shows protection status at a glance and annoying pop-ups and interruption notifications have been eliminated.
The Titanium Maximum Security version adds easy-to-use options including secure erase, remote file lock in case of computer theft, a system tuner, and 10GB of secure online backup and sync with sharing features.
All versions of Trend Micro Titanium 2011 automatically find and uninstall existing and unnecessary security software to help reduce conflicts that can occur when multiple solutions are in operation.
Availability, Prices and Requirements
Trend Micro Titanium is a family of three products offering protection that is not only effective, fast and easy-to-use, but also brings the power of cloud computing to block threats before they reach your computer.
Trend Micro Titanium 2011 products will be available for purchase starting September 08, 2010 in the U.S. through retailers and the Trend Micro online store, through retail channel partners in select countries worldwide, and at various retail locations online.
• Trend Micro™ Titanium™ Antivirus+ ($39.95 for 1 PC, $59.95 for 3 PCs) – Includes antivirus, antispyware and Web threat protection, stopping malicious downloads and finding and blocking malicious links in emails or IMs.
• Trend Micro™ Titanium™ Internet Security ($49.95 for 1 PC, $69.95 for 3 PCs) – Includes everything in Titanium Antivirus+ plus spam blocking, customizable parental controls, data theft prevention, and helps prevent unauthorized changes to applications.
• Trend Micro™ Titanium™ Maximum Security ($59.95 for 1 PC, $79.95 for 3 PCs) – Includes everything in Titanium Internet Security plus 10 GB secure online backup with sync and sharing features, system optimization, Secure Erase, Wi-Fi protection and Remote File Lock to remotely secure confidential files in case your PC is stolen.
Trend Micro Titanium 2011 products support Microsoft Windows® 7 Family, Service Pack 1 or higher; Windows Vista, Service Pack 1 or higher; and Windows® XP Family (32 bit or higher), Service Pack 3 or higher. For Windows 7 and Vista 1GB memory is recommended; for Windows XP 512MB is recommended; and 500 MB disk space for all three editions.
About Trend Micro
Founded in 1988, Trend Micro Inc., a global leader in Internet content security has over 20 years of experience creating a safer world for consumers and businesses to exchange digital information. Based in Tokyo and employing more than 4,400 people in 23 countries, Trend is both a pioneer and industry vanguard. The company is advancing integrated threat management technology to protect operational continuity, personal information, and property from malware, spam, data leaks and the newest Web threats.
Visit TrendWatch to learn more about the latest threats.
Trend Micro’s flexible solutions are supported 24/7 by threat intelligence and analysis experts around the globe.
Many of these solutions are powered by the Smart Protection Network infrastructure, an Internet cloud-based innovation that combines sophisticated reputation technology, feedback loops, and the expertise of TrendLabs℠ researchers to deliver real-time protection against rapidly emerging threats. Trend Micro’s trusted security solutions include products ranging from single PC consumer solutions to enterprise-level security and threat management. Trend’s products are sold through business partners worldwide. Please visit Trend Micro.com to learn more.
They’ve been building AV products for 22 years and started in the Czech republic. It’s now privately held by the two founders. They believe they are the most senior of the AV companies in terms of how long the founders have been active in the company.
They’re the #1 or #2 AV in the world – 40 languages, 125 million users. The US is the largest market for revenue and the second largest for the free version.
The interesting thing is that they are community based. They distribute the product for free and it is “every bit as good as paid AV”. The community becomes malware collectors and enables them to see viruses around the world instantly. The community also does the marketing by referral – 3 million users per month. The community also provides online support as volunteers (some have posted as many as 20,000 replies). The community volunteers also help develop the localized versions.
A user can install the free product and a few weeks later is prompted to register. It expires after a year and the user is prompted to either renew the free version or buy the not-free version. Premium versions add sandboxing (“for geeks”) and there is an Internet Security Suite that adds a 2 way firewall and anti-spam. The free version is good enough for most. They recommend the premium version with firewall for online transactions.
The free version does a lot, detecting malware, rootkits, and also doing reputation ranking on websites.
There’s also a complete set of corporate products – desktop, servers, email – all with an enterprise class management GUI. In September the new version comes out with a focus on SMB usability. It’s a completely new management environment. The client version will also have full sandboxing capabilities.
The client product gets refreshed every January and they’re adding some cloud features for delivery of signatures and crowd sourcing website reputation. There will be extra protections for online transactions such as complete sandboxing – it in effect turns the sandbox inside out and creates a complete safe environment so it doesn’t matter if the machine is infected.
They support Windows (back to 95) and have Mac and Linux products. They also support most mobile OS’s but not Android right now. RIM and Apple lock down their environments so viruses aren’t a big worry, but Android isn’t locked down at all. Mac and Linux are managed just like Windows.
There’s white listing and black listing in the corporate version for apps and websites. They provide a big list and it can be customized. Also has heuristic analysis and is not just signature based.
The client is fast and lightweight which is good for netbooks and older PC’s (ie, the consumer market).
Summit Partners just invested $100 million in the company as a minority stake. They see the company as profitable and well-managed and will help AVAST move to “the next stage”. They have a lot of operational experience so this is about more than raising money. They see value in the free version and will continue to build the company. This isn’t like a startup that needs funding, they’re just going to the next level.
Vince did say something interesting:
“Macs aren’t any more secure than Windows. They are just fewer users so it is a smaller target. There’s no reason to attack such a small footprint [yet].”
4 May 2010 – London, UK – IT security and data protection firm Sophos has announced that it has reached a definitive agreement to sell a majority interest in the company to Apax Partners, a global private equity group, in a transaction valuing the company at $830 million (USD). When the transaction is completed, the founders of Sophos will retain a significant minority shareholding. TA Associates, a minority shareholder in Sophos since 2002, will sell its full interest to Apax in this transaction.
Sophos operates in the IT security market, protecting companies of all sizes against computer and data threats. Sophos’s flagship endpoint security and data protection product offers anti-virus, anti-spyware, client firewall, host intrusion prevention, network access control, application control, device control, disk encryption and data leak prevention. The company has over 100 million users in more than 150 countries, with customers including Cisco, Marks and Spencer, Heinz and Harvard University. In its fiscal year ended March 31, 2010 (unaudited), Sophos had billings in excess of $330 million (compared with $273 million in FY 2009), revenue in excess of $260 million (FY2009: $213 million) and generated unlevered free cash flow of approximately $55 million (FY2009: $40 million).
“Over the past three years, Sophos has prospered operationally and financially, growing our revenues at a 27% cumulative annual growth rate and generating strong cash flow,” said Steve Munford CEO, of Sophos. “As the market continues its migration from point solution to tailored, unified security suites, Sophos’s strategy to offer the world’s most resilient, cost effective solutions without any additional complexity remains key. Apax’s financial backing, combined with Sophos’s deep understanding of security and data protection is great news for our customers, prospects and partners. It is also a testament to the efforts of all those who helped bring Sophos to where it is today. ”
“We are delighted to have the opportunity to back Sophos as well as its excellent CEO and management team,” said Salim Nathoo, a partner in the Tech & Telecom team at Apax Partners. “We identified the security software space as an attractive investment area for us given its rapid growth driven by ever increasing malware threats and high barriers to entry. Sophos is a very strong platform and is gaining market share. Apax’s strong track record and industry specific knowledge in the technology sector makes Sophos a perfect fit, and we look forward to working closely with this high-growth business going forward.”
“We invested in Sophos eight years ago because of its stellar reputation in the security software marketplace,” said Ajit Nedungadi, a Managing Director at TA Associates. “We have enjoyed working with the founders and management team of Sophos to further build on that foundation, helping them grow the company six-fold since 2002. Our best wishes to Steve and his team for continued success.”
Technology & telecoms is one of the five sectors on which Apax Partners focuses exclusively. Notable current and historic investments in the sector include Promethean World, a leader in the rapidly growing global market for interactive learning technology; SMART Technologies Inc, a Canadian provider of interactive collaboration products; TDC A/S, the pan-European telecoms business headquartered in Denmark; Weather Investments, an international telecommunications business; and Inmarsat and Intelsat, which are both global satellite operators.
Alongside Apax Partners, current shareholders will retain significant stakes in the business, including Dr Jan Hruska and Dr Peter Lammer, who co-founded the company in 1985.
Follow the dog on Twitter 
Loading ...
Kommentz