Panda Security Insight

Today I would like to share with you some good news about Panda…
 
We have announced the recent purchase of our Swedish, Finnish and UK franchises. With these additions, we now have a direct presence with our own offices in 12 countries and we will shortly be announcing the purchase of a company in China. We are also present, in the form of franchises, in another 44 countries.
 
Panda’s history is one of innovation in all fields. When we first embarked on our international expansion in 1995, we asked ourselves how we could expand the company globally without the financial muscle to establish ourselves in other countries.
 
We found the answer to the question by adopting a franchise system, operating under very specific criteria. And this system was a tremendous success. There is no doubt that this business-oriented innovation, along with the technological innovations we have fomented overtime, have helped Panda become a reference point for the market worldwide.
 
Over the last two years, with the entry of investment funds such as (Investindustrial, GalaCapital, HarbourVest and Atlantic Bridge) in our share capital, we have found ourselves in a very comfortable position to face the present crisis. After 20 years of success, we are now at a point where we can make the investments we need, which makes us highly competitive both on the corporate and consumer markets and from a technological and product-centered point of view. We also have a highly scalable business model that gives us the flexibility to grow.
 
We have also just launched our Retail 2010 product line and we are revamping our corporate solutions. And needless to say, have redoubled our commitment to Cloud Antivirus, the solution we launched last April and which has once again positioned Panda in the vanguard of security technology.
 
I have to say, this is possible not just thanks to our partners, but also to the whole team working tirelessly in 56 countries to make all of this possible. Can we improve? Always.

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Uncategorized Cloud Antivirus, Panda Security, purchase

Over the past few weeks I have participated in various events where I have had the opportunity to share, jointly with other members of the Panda team, some of our latest research on cyber-threats.  Some of this examples include this PandaLabs post, this Press Release or this Panda Security Insight post.

There is a recurrent question coming out from those attending any of those events: “given those increasing threats and their broad impact on society overall, why don’t security vendors share this?”.  Our repeated response is “We DO already”.  There must be something wrong with our communication strategy… There is a big effort being done by vendors to raise awareness about the various cyber-threats that affect both consumers and businesses.  Malware has been escalating over the past years and, in addition to fight it with improved technologies, most security vendors have increased PR efforts to make it known to the wider population.  We all know that technology by itself cannot win this battle, users need to know the basics about cyber-threats in order to be able behave adequately when using / benefiting from technology.   

You can get a sense of these efforts (and quickly understand how many and diverse the potential threats are) by visiting some of the security vendors blogs.  In addition to Panda’s, you may want to take a look at some other security vendors blogs: McAfee, Symantec, F-Secure, Sophos and many others. 

If all vendors communicate recurrently with the market and share our latest research and most of us are pushing initiatives to increase awareness about cyber-threats and how to be protected, why is the general public still so unaware of the problem?  One of the reasons lie in the fact that we may be perceived to be biased and having a business interest in exaggerating the existing threats.  Reality is that, while it benefits us indeed users buying our security products, our driver is not improving our P&L.  If we were to calculate the ROI of our “increase awareness” activities, I would not be surprised if it was negative (our worldwide “Protect our kids” campaign may serve as an example).  We do these activities (I speak for Panda, but I am sure that most other vendors share this view) because they are an intrinsic part of our mission.

With this in mind, and in order to have a bigger impact on Society, I encourage public administrations to work alongside with us, security vendors, to continue to extend the message.  Technology and the Internet are great tools that will help the world be prosperous.  However, as they have been adopted by a growing percentage of businesses and consumers for their daily activities, we need to continue to work to maintain them safe.

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Last Friday, President Obama presented his conclusions on the report he commissioned some weeks after entering the White House about cyber-security in the United States.  This review, coordinated by Melissa Hathaway, focused on understanding the efforts made until now by the federal government to protect the information and communication infrastructure in the United States, and to present recommendations to protect these networks and guarantee prosperity in the country.  You can see a video of Obama’s speech, and the transcript.  The complete report is also available.

For those of us involved in IT security, there was nothing really new in the President’s speech, nor in the report itself.  However, it is possible to detect a transcendental change since May 29, 2009: President Obama, has clearly and firmly warned American society (and by extension the rest of the world) of the need to take coordinated action to protect cyber infrastructure and the activity it supports against the growing threats of cyber-crime and cyber-terrorism.  This, from my point of view, represents a turning point.  At the following links you will find the view that some of the analysts I regularly follow have taken on this announcement: Bruce Schneier, Byron Acohido, Wall Street Journal, USA Today and Brian Krebs.
 
No longer is it just companies in the IT security sector (whose perspective could be perceived to be driven by business interests) that are leading the calls to combat this scourge.  The Obama administration has now joined the drive to promote awareness which the industry has been involved in for years.  I wouldn’t say that the efforts made by public authorities in various countries until now have been completely invalid, but I would say that they could have been better. 

The actions announced by President Obama come into five broad areas:

• Establishing clear leadership in cyber-security issues, with an adequate structure to review laws and policies and improve accountability of federal, state and local administration in the USA.
• Developing an environment that facilitates a coordinated response from government, private entities and allies to any cyber-security event that requires it.
• Strengthening collaboration between the American government and its allies as well as with the private sector (which is actually responsible for most critical network infrastructure).  All of this, without dictating security standards, rather collaborating to implement measures to improve security and ensure prosperity.
• Increasing investment in innovation and development to ensure that it meets predicted future requirements.
• Starting a social awareness campaign which not only informs the public of the risks, but which is also designed to prepare people to work and innovate in technologies that will be developed throughout the 21st century.

I fully agree with the direction of the proposed actions, not just in the United States but also in all other countries.  We have in the past seen numerous initiatives, but many of them have lacked leadership, commitment or support.  As in the ‘physical’ world, problems that affect cyber-security and the security of other telecommunication infrastructures will continue to increase and we need mid-to-long-term commitments and objectives if they are really to make a positive contribution to resolving these problems. 

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Blogs, security Malware, Obama, security