ESET Opens Branch in Australia, Helping SMBs to Tackle Threats as Trojans Targeting LinkedIn

Latest Research from ESET Points to the Opportunity for SMBs In Australia to Withstand Emerging Threats without Slowing Resources
ESET®, the global leader in proactive digital protection with a record of 10 years consecutive VB100 awards for its award-winning ESET NOD32® technology, today released its latest Threat Report for Australia, highlighting the emerging threat from Trojan software targeting LinkedIn and other commonly used applications.
The ESET semi-annual Threat Report is based on end user device activity analyzed within ESET LiveGrid® technology, ESET’s powerful cloud-based early warning engine and malware collection network, over a eight month period. ESET LiveGrid® technology also utilizes user interactions across a wide range of Australian businesses, government entities, small to medium businesses and other organizations.
The report shows that from January to August 2013, the biggest single threats came from the group of malicious software commonly grouped as Trojans. Trojans are typically used by criminals to steal data. According to the report, Trojan activity has been on the rise over the past six months. Small to medium businesses are being targeted in particular, and especially via LinkedIn, a software platform increasingly used by people seeking work opportunities or employers looking to find staff.
Senior executives from ESET were in Australia for the opening of ESET’s local Australian office in Sydney this week. Parvinder Walia, Marketing Director, ESET Asia Pacific, said the ESET Threat Report highlighted the need for businesses of all sizes to be ready for unknown threats, and to create a defence-in-depth approach for security.

“The malware threat is not insurmountable, even for smaller businesses which often don’t have in-house IT or security staff,” says Mr. Walia.

“It is important to remember, that with the available security software, small to medium businesses can achieve the same level of threat coverage as the larger enterprises - and therefore continue to access important applications such as LinkedIn. They can also deploy antivirus solutions without dramatically stifling their network and computing resources and can protect against zero day or unknown threats. We know this because at ESET, we have a 25 year reputation of leading the industry and our ESET NOD32® technology holds the longest consecutive string of the VB100 awards of any other AV vendor,” adds Mr. Walia.

Mr. Walia also announced the appointment of Florin Vasile to the role of Country Manager, Australia, to grow the local business and provide renewed focus on developing the ESET partner program. Mr. Vasile joins ESET from a background of executive positions with leading IT&C companies in multiple countries and continents.

Mr. Florin said; “When we look at the Threat Report’s findings, and more generally at the landscape for information security, it is critical that end user customers, including small to medium businesses, establish practices that enable key applications to be run across their networks without taking up considerable resources to do it. We will be working closely with our partner base to make sure our customers understand the options available to them when faced with an ever increasing complex threat landscape.”

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About ESET

ESET®, the pioneer of proactive protection and the maker of the award-winning ESET NOD32® technology, is a global provider of security solutions for businesses and consumers. For over 25 years, the Company continues to lead the industry in proactive threat detection. By obtaining the 80th VB100 award in June 2013, ESET NOD32 technology holds the record number of Virus Bulletin "VB100” Awards, and has never missed a single “In-the-Wild” worm or virus since the inception of testing in 1998. In addition, ESET NOD32 technology holds the longest consecutive string of the VB100 awards of any other AV vendor. ESET has received a number of accolades from AV-Comparatives, AV-TEST and other organizations. ESET NOD32® Antivirus, ESET Smart Security®, ESET Cyber Security® (solution for Mac), ESET® Mobile Security and IT Security for Business are trusted by millions of global users and are among the most recommended security solutions in the world.The Company has global headquarters in Bratislava (Slovakia), with regional distribution centers in San Diego (U.S.), Buenos Aires (Argentina), and Singapore; with offices in Jena (Germany), Prague (Czech Republic) and Sao Paulo (Brazil). ESET has malware research centers in Bratislava, San Diego, Buenos Aires, Singapore, Prague, Košice (Slovakia), Krakow (Poland), Montreal (Canada), Moscow (Russia) and an extensive partner network for more than 180 countries. Visit www.eset.com.au for more information.

About ESET LiveGrid® technology

Build on ThreatSense.NET advanced early warning system, ESET LiveGrid® is designed to provide additional levels of security to your computer. It constantly monitors your system’s running programs and processes against the latest intelligence collected from millions of ESET users worldwide. Additionally, your system scans are processed faster and more precisely as the ESET LiveGrid® database grows over time.ESET’s cloud-based LiveGrid® technology comprises of several parts, which can be roughly divided into three types of data which are sent from participating clients’ computers to our Security Research Lab: detection statistics (also known as ThreatSense.Net), malicious and suspicious files, and various metadata about files. All of this is vital for making detection more effective. The information flows the other way (from the cloud to the client) as well. The benefits of cloud-assisted scanning include a faster response time (not having to wait for a full signature update), better scanning performance (optimization) and a more accurate detection with less false positives.