AVAR (The Association of Anti Virus Asia Researchers) has been hosting Asia-related anti-virus conferences since 1998. Their mission is to prevent the spread of and the damage caused by malicious software, and to develop co-operative relationships among anti-malicious software experts in Asia. This year's conference took place this week in Kuala Lumpur, and the theme was "Is AV Dead?"
I certainly hope AV isn't dead :-) They need to protect consumers from malicious and unwanted software. If they don't do this, our job at AppEsteem only becomes that much more difficult.
But AVs are struggling to stop unwanted software. On top of that, most AVs are also software monetizers, and sometimes their products use sales and distribution tactics that make them look like unwanted software themselves. If AVs don't get their act together, I believe that they'll get disrupted by somebody willing to do what it takes to keep the consumer computing experience clean and safe.
My talk was titled Near-death experience: why AVs got clobbered by Unwanted Software, and how they’ll win. I discussed both of these issues, as well as what we've learned so far from our pilot. I hope AVs as well as our software vendors will find it insightful.
We love our security partners. We count on them to hold the line and keep consumers safe. AppEsteem is committed to helping them do this, because we believe that a clean world is a much better world.
One other point: we're thrilled to announce that K7 Computing, a respected Chennai-based AV company, has signed up to be our certification partner. They'll help us scale so we can keep up with the increasing amount of certification requests that we're now receiving. They've begun to dig deep into our comprehensive requirements, and we'll be heading to India next month to get them operational. Once that happens, we'll make a bigger splash, but in the meantime, here's a pic of Hong and me with the K7 crew , taken during AVAR's gala dinner at the KL Tower.
