SOFTWARE AVG INTERVIEW
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get so much information back on what’s malicious
and what’s not – on the web and on people’s computers. That information is really valuable and it changes every hour. There are lots of companies out there that will pay us for that information, like Microsoft and Cisco, who have large user bases. So we sell them information – not about the end user, just about the threat landscape.
These days people are accessing the internet on more and more types of device – presumably with very different types of vulnerabilities. What are the main challenges for a security company now compared to when AVG started? The challenges are driven by a few things. Number one is the devices, then you’ve got user behaviour. Today people live their whole lives online and that’s really impacted the type of threats we’re seeing – they are focused on what people are doing and where
they are doing it. What we’ve had to do is modify how we protect people. Traditionally it was just anti-virus, but much of what we do now is in the cloud, and there’s also a lot of behavioural analysis. If a programme acts suspiciously, like dialling China, we block it. Then we have web protection. Some
of the other players have crawlers all over the internet scanning websites – we don’t have that infrastructure or the desire to have it. What we have is 110 million users using the product – they are the scanners. About 50 per cent choose voluntarily to send us back what they’re seeing. It’s not anything about them, we’re just getting the results back. So we will be one step ahead of you the entire time you’re online. The sites get scanned every time you click them, and that’s the only type of defence that’s really effective; it protects you in real time. There’s really nobody else that does this from our competition. With our new products we have the best
detection rates in the industry and it is really, really fast. What we really want to do is get the message out that protection is an obligation, it’s not an option. You send people documents, you interact with your bank – if more people are protected there’s less chance that others will be infected.
Since Intel bought MacAfee, it has announced its interests in the security market. However, in doing so it has made its position clear that security software firms are no longer sufficient alone to protect computers on their own – would you refute that?
It’s an interesting dilemma. Putting security on the chip is hardware. How do you dynamically update hardware every 20 minutes? I’m struggling to see how even the smartest engineers in the world are going to get a piece of plastic to do that. Intel may find applications in mobile and the enterprise space with their new acquisition, but I do question whether or not they can put that on the chip. And will Microsoft, which also provides security, allow Intel access to the operating system through the chip? There are a lot of unknowns there. There’s no way they will eliminate the need for security software. They might be able to do anti-virus there, which I doubt, but think of the other layers I mentioned. By the time they get the technology to do part of it, behaviour and threats will have evolved so far that if you aren’t dynamic and quick moving, forget about it. It’s like having one lock
manufacturer – you will never protect the way you need to. It has always been a dynamic and fast moving industry; it’s good that they’re thinking about it, but…
So you’d certainly dispute the idea that software alone is no longer fit for purpose? Forget about it. There are lots of drivers behind what they were doing. You can read all the speculation, but it was nice they could buy a healthy revenue stream.
The recent Stuxnet worm that 64 PCR December
AVG: NEED TO KNOW Founded in 1991.
Its products boast over 110 million users worldwide.
Has corporate offices in the US, the UK and mainland Europe.
Rated number one in threat detection by
AV-Test.org for May to August 2010.
AVG’s products product PCs using signature-based detection, polymorphic-based detection, heuristic-based analysis and behaviour-based analysis.
seemed to target infrastructure in Iran has been labelled as a ‘prototype’ state-funded weapon by some, as well as the shape of cyber- warfare in the future. Some, such as Kaspersky Labs, believe that it only could have operated with a government behind it, or ‘nation- state support.’ Would you agree with that assessment and what role do security software organisations have to play? Is it a government-backed cyber-attack? I don’t know. Is it plausible? Certainly. You will see that as a platform for cyber warfare. I think all governments around the world are making sure they’re working on the latest technology, and that’s where a lot of great technologies come from. They are working with a lot of
enterprise players – we often will give advice too but we’re very much focused on consumers, so we’re not into that level of intricacy. But there’s validity to it. Wasn’t it three years ago the whole infrastructure of Estonia was taken out? You know it can be done. There is definitely a whole lot of
corporate espionage happening, where the Chinese are stealing highly
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