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Intel Enters Anti-Virus Market
Jack writes "ITO holds a story on latest Intel investment: "Intel is branching into anti-virus security with a $16 million investment in Czech anti-virus software vendor Grisoft. Grisoft's AVG anti-virus is used on more than 25 million computers worldwide, according to the company."
Its not gone, i Just got it this weekend. It is just hidden on the site. I think ypu need to go to free.grisoft.com
AVG download page
I've used the free version of AVG for a few years now and it has been very good to me. I just hope that with this infuse of money Grisoft doesn't become too "corporate."
Nothing disturbs me more than blind loyalism towards some unrealistic and over-idealistic notion of one's nationality.
AVG is great for me because it barely uses any system resources. I run a small company with older hardware and it runs great on there. Much better than something like Norton which can really bog down one of those machines
Not quite 'buying over the company' as partnering with a local Czech VC to buy over a majority stake from another Czech VC firm.
From the press release on Grisoft's website:
Grisoft announces investment by Intel Capital and Enterprise Investors
Prague, Czech Republic - September 6th, 2005 - Grisoft, one of the leading providers of anti-virus security software, announced today that Enterprise Investors (EI), the largest private equity firm in Central and Eastern Europe, and Intel Capital, Intel Corporation's venture investment fund, have made a substantial investment in the company.
The $52 million investment in Grisoft by Enterprise Investors and Intel Capital will result in a new ownership structure of the company, with a majority stake being acquired from current owners Benson Oak Capital. As a result of this strategic transaction, the two new investors will own a 65% stake in Grisoft.
Kind of ties in to the future of anti-virus...AV is moving towards file behavioral analysis to determine a file's viral status since signature detection presents an increasingly serious zero-day problem. Virtualizing a file is a great way to determine behavior, and Intel is working on hardware-assisted virtualization:
http://www.intel.com/technology/computing/vptech/
Tie the two ideas together, and you might see one of the ways Intel is hoping to use it's virtualization technology.
Well there always is Avast antivirus.
There's always ClamAV, though it doesn't have real-time virus scanning and it's not as easy to use (a Windows install requires Cygwin). Still, it's an open source option.
Sure. It's called "Trusted Computing". It's another name for "Disney Rights Management". I hope you enjoy getting what you're wishing for.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
And AntiVir
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
Don't bother with Cygwin just for AV. Clamwin is pretty sweet. No real-time scanning, but installation and configuration is fairly straight-forward -- and the database is updated several times a day.
The biggest problem it faces may be that it's so plain and easy to use that people have trouble accepting that it's as good as all the colorful commercial offerings they see. I wonder if Intel's gonna keep AVG's viruses.
Use it as a second scanner if you already have another AV program-- Clamwin is not a resource hog.
Oh yeah -- it's frequently used as an email scanner in networks of all sizes... don't worry about it's virus database!