CORP TALK: HWM met up with the Mr. Miroslav Trnka, Chief Executive Officer and founder of ESET and Mr. Maros Mozola, Senior Vice President International Business of ESET in Hong Kong recently, when the company launched the 4th Edition of its ESET NOD32 Smart Security Suite 4.0 to the market.

Best known for its NOD32 Antivirus software, which runs transparently in the background with little strain on system requirements, the Bratislava, Slovakia-based company (with a global distribution office in San Diego, USA) has been in Europe for 22 years and is now continuing its focus to grow within the Asia Pacific region.

UPDATE (16 July): Version 2 Singapore, the distributor of ESET products in Singapore, has notified us that the ESET Antivirus 4.0 & Smart Security 4.0 will be launched on 1 August in Singapore. The ESET NOD32 Antivirus (Standard Edition, 1-User for 1-Year) will cost S$40 while the ESET Smart Security (Standard Edition, 1-User for 1-Year) will cost S$60.

Here are some photos from the Hong Kong launch itself (held on 29 June 2009). One-on-one interview transcript to follow after the break.

 

HWM: ESET has been around for 22 years in Europe, what are viruses like today versus many years ago?

Mr. Miroslav Trnka: In the beginning, there were two kinds of viruses - boot sector-type viruses and executable file-type viruses. By the end of the 80s, the era of macro viruses for Microsoft Office and other applications began. With the rise of the Internet, computer worms became widespread, heralding the golden era of Internet viruses.

Network viruses made the spread even more efficient because prior to the emergence of network worms, the duration from first detection to widespread proliferation would normally take more than 6 months to reach the US East Coast from say, Europe. With network worms, it would spread around the globe in several hours to a few minutes. So the reaction time of anti-virus companies is very important but challenging, because it’s near impossible to send updates to entire users in such a short span of time.

Prior to 2003, a typical virus writer would normally be a young student who has very little understanding of social behavior among large user groups but from 2003 onwards, a majority of computer viruses was and is produced by criminal groups with the intention for profit. It changed the way anti-virus companies operate because we’re facing professionals today. Instead of leaving signatures and presence in viruses today, these professionals are more focused on smaller territories and targeted attacks, prompting a change in strategy for companies like us. Today, more than several hundred thousands of malware are released per day so it’s not possible to leave the analysis to humans, so we have to develop special tools which can help us analyze these data.

The challenge for us today is for anti-virus companies to work with politicians and governments to work together and address threats from groups operating from countries not under our direct jurisdictions. Just look at our Internet traffic, and more than 90% of network traffic is garbage, malware threats and spam, so imagine how much money we are wasting for something that is useless to the corporate network. These are issues that anti-virus companies alone cannot address today.

HWM: What separates ESET products from its closest competitors?

Mr. Maros Mozola: A majority of the feedback we’re getting is that we protect the user very efficiently but do not put additional strain on the user. We run in the background, letting the computer run all the applications the user has bought it for and yet the user’s computer doesn’t get dominated by the anti-virus program.

HWM: ESET was a little late into the game offering a full security suite; how successful has Smart Security been for the company in engaging Internet security threats?

Trnka: We’re in the market for both security suites and specialized anti-virus solutions. There will be individuals who want protection from viruses, security attacks and there will be parties who want a collection, or suites, that address all of these fields. This also means we need to cover all aspects of anti-virus and security solutions over time by collecting the best in each field to create a bigger and better viable solution for our customers with different needs.

HWM: ESET has been known to require low system requirements and disk space to operate. Not only that, it’s been known to run quietly in the background even on full disk scans, making it extremely transparent to the user. What sort of philosophy drives this development that has made the system so popular with users?

Trnka: In the early days, users would normally switch off the anti-virus program because it was too distracting and slowed down their programs when they’re working on their PC. So we developed a solution that was so transparent that it doesn’t have to be switched off anytime.

HWM: ESET utilizes ThreatSense technology, to sense threats before other vendor products are even aware of the attack. Without giving too much away, how does the technology work and why do you think it’s been effective for ESET so far?

Trnka: ThreatSense is based on a modified concept normally associated with a virtual PC environment. We emulated a virtual image of scanning objects in memory within this environment, which is effective for us because we’re not just focusing on the science of a binary image but we’re inspecting the application file in real-world situations.

To us, it was the best technology for us to detect polymorphic and metamorphic viruses. Of course, it’s not easy to run such a complicated technology and keep it fast and efficient all at the same time. Imagine this: In a PC environment, the flow of code has many branches, so it’s quite common that some programs will have to make some branch predictions.

This also means that our technology must be smart enough to decide which path to take while the program in memory keeps changing in real-time. It’s a huge technological challenge for us but we’ve been able to do so with ThreatSense and that’s the real difference between us and our competitors.

HWM: How are you guarding against malicious social media attacks like the recent Twitter malicious phishing attack via emails?

Trnka: We have several technologies which detect phishing attacks. However, people within these networks have to take extra steps to care about security because it’s very easy to make a fake file and send it to different users on a social network. I think there has to be a major and real epidemic affecting social networks first before users begin to realize this. For ESET, we are guarding executable files so this should at least protect users within social network environments.

HWM: In today’s demanding multi-tasking environment, with the release of ESET NOD32 Smart Security 4.0, do you think the additional features on this version would tax system requirements compared to version 2.0 or 3.0?

Trnka: We’re continuously working on lowering resource consumption because we’re always polishing the system. This has always been our competitive advantage. Of course, it’s also challenging but I am confident our developers have the skillsets to ensure we’re able to meet both demands. On the other hand, computers today are becoming faster with better memory solutions, so I don’t think that’s going to be a major issue for us.

HWM: Many modern OS and browsers include built-in security features to counter Internet threats, is it still required to rely on a full security suite like ESS anymore?

Trnka: The problem is this mindset to move boxes from one place to another. I think there has to be a commitment to provide a level of service with security being part of a major process.

As a security solutions provider, we need to care about the customer all the time, not only at the point of sale. While we do feel it’s a good trend to see security features being introduced and built into various operating systems and browsers, there is still a lot of work within the security space for specialized companies like ESET to function in.

HWM: How would the advent of cloud computing affect the anti-virus scene as a whole?

Trnka: I was attending the Anti-Virus Product Developer’s (AVPD) consortium in London recently and one of the query was how can anti-virus solution providers test applications within a cloud computing environment. We realized that different companies view cloud computing differently and while some products boast the ability to protect files in a cloud computing environment, if you look closely, it’s not really the cloud computing environment that they’re operating in.

For ESET, we are doing extensive research in this field in cooperation with the research labs in the University of Slovakia. Basically we’re looking at distribution models in areas of computer security within a cloud computing environment and hopefully put to market something that would really help the user for real.

HWM: In your press presentation earlier, you’ve mentioned that you want to focus more on the Asia Pacific region in terms of market growth, with 42% growth in revenue in 2008 and predicting 55% in 2009. This is as opposed to global sales revenue, which grew by 68% in 2008 but may see an estimated 43% growth in 2009. Tell us ESET’s plans for the APAC market, compared to global.

Mozola: Firstly, ESET is currently partnering with Version-2, a distribution company for five countries/cities - Hong Kong, Macau, Mainland China, Singapore and Taiwan. While these five countries will remain one of our major focuses this year, in reality, our biggest APAC market is Japan, which account for about 55% of revenues from the APAC region.

We started our first international distribution in Australia, then New Zealand, so we have other partners in this region. Statistically, we’re currently number 1 in Hong Kong in terms of revenue, and number 1 in terms of users in Thailand, and number 2 in China with 40 million users.

The business model in different countries and piracy issues in some mean that we have to work differently in other regions, to ensure there’s a sustainable revenue model throughout. We’ve been in the business for 22 years in Europe, but only 8 years in APAC, so there’s plenty more room for us to grow in this region.

HWM: We’ve seen your launch of your mobile phone anti-virus solutions for Windows Mobile. Do you have plans to roll out similar solutions for other mobile phone platforms?

Mozola: We’re going to launch a product soon for the Symbian platform and explore the possibility for the iPhone, Linux and Android platforms, but they’re not feasible at this point in time.

Trnka: To add, there are limitations in the iPhone platform that’s stopping us from producing solutions for it because you cannot run background processes on the iPhone. In the future, this will be changed but for now, it’s not possible to create a full-functional anti-virus solution for the platform. But we’re definitely prepared to release solutions for different mobile platforms when situations change.

HWM: Further to your presentation, ESET mentioned that it wants to put more effort to increase sales in the enterprise space, which currently stands at 22% of your total sales for 2008 (37% on small-medium business and 41% on home). Can you share with us your plans to grow the enterprise space?

Mozola: On the technical part, the requirements for our products and services are different for home and business market. Our corporate customers want easy manageability because they have limited resources to manage security. They also want excellent technical support and they know that at one point, something’s going to go bad so they need a reliable partner. These elements are more visible in the corporate environment rather than home.

On the sales and marketing part, we are more focused on reliability and manageability, so we stress our good points in different way, such as our track record so people can trust us. Businessses are normally more resistant to change because every change will bring more complexity into the business so we need to be a solid, stable partner for them. In terms of sales, we usually use different vehicles to get to the end-user, such as retail and online for home users. For businesses, we need to get with the local partners, especially with value-added and highly networked resellers, who are trusted advisors to the businesses.