“Cloud Antivirus Security Startup Immunet Appoints Dr. Zulfikar Ramzan as Chief Scientist” plus 2 more |
- Cloud Antivirus Security Startup Immunet Appoints Dr. Zulfikar Ramzan as Chief Scientist
- VIPRE Antivirus Wins VB100 Award
- Businesses 'disenchanted' with traditional antivirus tech
| Cloud Antivirus Security Startup Immunet Appoints Dr. Zulfikar Ramzan as Chief Scientist Posted: 12 Aug 2010 03:08 AM PDT Posted on: Thursday, 12 August 2010, 04:00 CDT PALO ALTO, Calif., Aug. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Immunet, the developer of next-generation cloud-based security and AntiVirus technologies, today announced that Dr. Zulfikar Ramzan has joined the company as Chief Scientist. Dr. Ramzan is a leading industry expert in architecting next-generation reputation-based technologies that utilize large-scale data mining and machine learning techniques. Dr. Ramzan will be in charge of furthering the efficacy of Immunet's core cloud-based security software, including its free cloud antivirus security product, Immunet Protect 2.0 which launched in June 2010 and has been installed by over 450,000 people. (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20100812/SF49728) (Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20100812/SF49728) Prior to joining Immunet, Dr. Ramzan was Technical Director and Architect of Symantec's Security Technology and Response division. While there, he architected Symantec's Reputation-based security technology (codenamed Quorum), which comprises a fundamental part of the company's consumer and enterprise security offerings. On joining Immunet, Dr. Ramzan says, "Over the years we have learned a tremendous amount about the threat landscape and what consumers need in an AntiVirus solution. To provide our customers with comprehensive and effective protection, we have to apply cutting-edge algorithms and advanced mathematics. We also benefit from powerful technology trends, such as moving security intelligence into the cloud and leveraging social networking to protect large communities of users in real-time." "I am incredibly excited to have the chance to build an antivirus solution from the ground up," said Zulfikar. "Moreover, being able to execute on this vision with such an outstanding team is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," he added. As the latest addition to the Immunet team, he joins Founder Oliver Friedrichs and VP of Engineering Alfred Huger as well as cloud security expert Dr. Adam O'Donnell. "I am excited that Zulfikar will be leading Immunet's efforts to build advanced security technology. He will be a critical asset to Immunet's leadership team and will help us take the company to the next stage as we increase our product efficacy and market penetration in the antivirus space," says Oliver Friedrichs, Immunet Founder and CEO. Dr. Ramzan is considered an authority on emerging threat landscape trends including malware, phishing, online fraud, web attacks and Web 2.0 security. Dr. Ramzan is also a recognized expert in the field of cryptography; he has co-authored over 50 technical articles, and two books including Crimeware: Understanding New Attacks and Defenses (Addison-Wesley Professional, 2008). He has over 50 patent applications related to various aspects of antimalware/anti-virus, reputation-based technologies, information security, mobile wireless computing, digital rights management, authentication mechanisms, and secure transaction systems, of which 11 patents have been granted. Dr. Ramzan is a frequent public speaker and has briefed numerous media outlets including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, and Reuters as well as members of the United States Congress and foreign nationals on cyber-security trends and issues. He was selected as General Chair of CRYPTO 2010, the 30th International Cryptology Conference to be held at the University of California, Santa Barbara August 15-19, 2010. Dr. Ramzan holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and completed his thesis under Professor Ronald L. Rivest, a pioneer in cryptography and the inventor of the RSA public-key cryptosystem. You can follow Zulfikar on Twitter @zulfikar_ramzan. Add Zulfikar to Your Immunet Protection Community Immunet offers real-time cloud-based antivirus software that is compatible with existing security products and is available through a free download from Immunet's site. Any Immunet Protect user can add Dr. Ramzan to their Immunet Community simply by typing in "zulfikar @ immunet.com" from the Immunet Community panel's "Add People" link. Each new member who detects a threat immediately protects all other Immunet Community members through Immunet's Collective Immunity(TM) technology. About Immunet Immunet was founded in July 2008 by AntiVirus industry veterans to address a sweeping shift in the Internet threat landscape, partly due to the rising popularity of social networks. Immunet utilizes the latest advances in computing, including cloud security technology, community-based protection, and collective intelligence concepts combined with web-based Software as a Service deployment. Immunet Protect 2.0 is a free, cloud-based companion antivirus download that provides real-time antimalware protection against over 14 million threats daily. Immunet Protect 2.0 launched commercially in June 2010 and received a 4.5 Star review by CNET Editors. To connect with Immunet please visit www.immunet.com, follow us on Twitter @immunet or visit the Immunet Facebook Fan Page. Collective Immunity(TM) is a registered trademark of Immunet Corporation. SOURCE Immunet Corporation Source: PR Newswire This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| VIPRE Antivirus Wins VB100 Award Posted: 12 Aug 2010 07:22 AM PDT Latest Virus Bulletin VB100 Testing Places VIPRE Among Most Reliable Antivirus Products CLEARWATER, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sunbelt Software, now part of the GFI software family, today announced that its flagship antivirus solution − VIPRE® − has been listed on the VB100 list by Virus Bulletin, the highly-respected independent comparative testing group, in the August 2010 issue of its online publication.
The test was conducted on a system running Windows Vista Professional Service Pack 2 and subjected VIPRE to over 100,000 threats ranging from social networking and online gaming data stealers and three new strains of W32/Virut, which has been the bane of many products in the last few years. VIPRE detected 97.83% of worms and bots thrown at it and was particularly successful in detecting all "in the wild" viruses without generating a single false positive. Viruses are generally categorized as "in the wild" when they are spreading as a result of normal day-to-day operations on and between the computers of unsuspecting users. The outstanding level of malicious code detection recognizes the depth and accuracy of the VIPRE antivirus technology. VIPRE was also lauded for having one of the highest average proactive detection rates of any of the solutions tested in the past six months VIPRE has long been heralded as an efficient all-in-one endpoint malware protection solution that is not a resource hog, a benefit picked up by the Virus Bulletin testers. "Sunbelt's marketing campaigns regularly boast of VIPRE's lightness of weight and lack of bloat, and these assertions are certainly supported by the product's wafer-thin 16MB installer, supplemented by a mere 66MB of updates, available to download as a standalone package from the company's website," said Virus Bulletin's John Hawes, who coordinated the testing. "The set-up process is short and sweet too, taking only a few seconds to complete – with no reboot needed, the process was over in less than half a minute." "Inclusion on the VB100 is a true testament of VIPRE's capabilities as it is pitted against other leading antivirus products," said Alex Eckelberry, CEO of Sunbelt Software. "Our focus has always been on customer satisfaction, ease of use and high level of threat detection. The tests from Virus Bulletin show that VIPRE is a reliable antivirus solution that is easy to set up and use." Virus Bulletin conducts independent comparative testing of antivirus products. The tests focus on virus detection rates and scanning speed, as well as look at how each product fares when scanning set files that are known to be clean. In order to display the VB100 logo, an antivirus product must have demonstrated in Virus Bulletin tests that: It detects all viruses currently spreading throughout a diverse user population during both on-demand and on-access scanning; and it generates no "false positives" when scanning a set of clean files. The product must fulfill these criteria in its default state. About Sunbelt Software Headquartered in Tampa Bay (Clearwater), Fla., Sunbelt Software was founded in 1994 and is a leading provider of Windows security software including enterprise antivirus, antispyware, email security, and malware analysis tools. Leading products include the VIPRE® and CounterSpy® product lines, Sunbelt Exchange Archiver™, CWSandbox™, and ThreatTrack™. For more information about Sunbelt Software, please visit the company's website at http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com. To learn more about current activities, products, and ideas at Sunbelt Software, please visit Sunbelt's corporate blog at http://www.sunbeltblog.com. To view this release online, go to http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Press/Releases/?id=368. Copyright © 2010 Sunbelt Software. All rights reserved. All trademarks used are owned by their respective companies. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Businesses 'disenchanted' with traditional antivirus tech Posted: 11 Aug 2010 09:19 AM PDT Steve Evans Published 11 August 2010 Customers are becoming more and more indifferent to traditional antivirus technologies, according to Lumension's Alan Bentley. Speaking to CBR, Bentley, SVP International at the vulnerability management firm, said that there is a mass acceptance that antivirus "just works" but the changing threat landscape and the increased management requirements that come with that mean users are beginning to look at alternative security methods. "Customers are becoming disenchanted about what antivirus can do. It's struggling after 15 years because of the changing threats. There are now multiple attack vectors to deal with. We're now seeing close to one million unique malware signatures per month; we used to see that in one year. AV vendors have to understand the threat to be able to fix it" Bentley told us. The challenge for the industry is how to cope with those new threats. A recent survey by Cyveillance found that AV vendors detect on average less than 19% of malware threats. That detection rate increases only to 61.7% after 30 days, suggesting that the industry is struggling to keep up with the bad guys. "Cyveillance is not the first to report that sort of thing," Bentley said. "There are free sites online that do the same thing. There is so much unique malware out there it is creating a problem for AV vendors." The first real signal that the bad guys were upping their game when it came to malware was the discovery of Conficker in November 2008. It was a clear indication that malware creation was becoming a highly professional and very well organised industry, Bentley said. "It was blended malware obviously written by very good coders - a bunch of different people writing different parts of it that were then brought together. It was very sophisticated," he said. So is this "disenchantment" resulting in a change in the security industry? Bentley believes that more companies are beginning to look at a trusted model of security rather than a threat model; in other words has the time for whitelisting finally arrived? With whitelisting only pre-approved applications are allowed to run on a computer, rather than the traditional blacklist approach which blocks applications that are listed as being bad. Critics of whitelisting claim that it can be difficult to keep up with, particularly when a vendor updates its software. Lumension is pushing what it calls Intelligent Whitelisting, which CEO Pat Clawson says addresses a lot of the concerns about it. "Traditional whitelisting is hard to use, it's exceptionally manual for the IT manager to maintain, whenever there's a change you have to rebuild and push that image out. What it does is exceptionally effective. It eliminates all the questions about what is allowed on a machine and therefore removes the risk. But it's difficult to manage and doesn't lend itself to an environment where workers are out and about. It drives the average end user crazy because you can't update programs," he told CBR earlier this year. "We have something called the Trusted Updater. This allows you to take common things that do background updating - such as Adobe, WebEx or a bespoke system - and update them automatically. This maintains the whitelist automatically without burdening the IT department or stopping the worker from doing their job - which was always one of the legacy issues with whitelisting," Clawson added. You can read the full Q&A with Pat Clawson here. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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