Amsterdam, October 26, 2009– AVG Technologies, developers of one of the world’s leading security and anti-virus software, today announced the general availability of its latest small business security products, AVG Internet Security Business Edition 9.0 and AVG Anti-Virus Business Edition 9.0 The new offerings leverage the significant enhancements in speed and levels of protection that AVG has delivered in its latest generation of consumer products, making it safer and easier to manage. With this announcement, AVG continues to improve its support for small businesses, many of which have limited or non-existent in-house IT capabilities.

“AVG’s 9.0 small business solutions provide businesses with more powerful and streamlined protection that deliver improved administration, more robust protection, and faster performance – all without getting in the way of business,” said J.R. Smith, CEO, AVG Technologies. “This generation of products is taking AVG back to its core strength of low impact, high performance security, and adds substantially to the portfolio of measures available to small businesses, and their employees, in working safe from cyber threats.”

Smarter Security That Won’t Slow Your Business Down

To minimize the impact of protection on productivity, AVG’s small business solutions now offer scan times that are up to 50 percent faster than earlier versions, depending on system configuration. The combined anti-virus/anti-spyware scanner employs new intelligent technology which marks files as safe or potentially unsafe during its initial scan, and ignores them in future scans unless the file structure changes. In addition, to counteract the increasing threats in today’s online world, AVG’s small business solutions combine both reactive and proactive technologies to deliver optimized protection in real-time. Building on a solid foundation of signature-based protection to deal with known threats, AVG 9.0 adds cutting-edge behavioral, in-the-cloud, and white listing technologies to manage the threats posed by the tens of thousands of new threats that appear daily.

Make the Internet Safer for Your Business, Your Staff, and Your Customers

Revolutionary in the AVG Internet Security offerings is the integration between the Resident Shield, firewall, and data protection modules. This enables modules to share malware information, increasing AVG’s ability to detect and remove most malicious types of malware, rootkits, and other threats for which signatures have not yet been issued. The redesigned firewall application assists in keeping business information safe from known and unknown threats and is significantly quieter and less intrusive; the new trusted database of applications and application certificates enables AVG to determine, without user intervention, the relative safety of any active process and block any deemed unsafe. Additionally, because the new firewall cooperates behind the scenes with AVG’s unique behavioral detection technology, it delivers significantly enhanced accuracy of threat detection.

Takes Care of Security While You Take Care of Business

AVG 9.0 for small businesses also includes key enhancements to minimize the management resources required. The new offerings incorporate cloning technology into the deployment process, simplifying and shortening installation time, and new system tools enable administrators to customize the way AVG works to protect the network. The new update manager makes sure the business is always protected against the latest threats – automatically, and the new Linux-based rescue CD restores the network in the event an existing infection renders systems unbootable. Finally, AVG has made it significantly easier to detect and remove any third-party security product that could cause conflicts and interfere with the user’s level of protection, and AVG offers expert support whenever our small business customers need.

Specific to AVG Internet Security Business Edition 9.0 is the addition of data protection functionality gained through AVG’s acquisition of Sana Security earlier this year. The behavioral technology learns the DNA of a business’ network so that it can recognize anomalies and block malicious processes, which dramatically improves protection against keyloggers and other crimeware. The new functionality in Identity Protection (IDP) will catch malicious software trying to hijack a system before it is able to cause any damage. To improve ease of use and administrator experience, IDP is manageable from the administrator’s console or can be completely silent.

In addition, the new client email scanner in AVG Anti-Virus Business Edition 9.0 cleans the email system of harmful message attachments and dangerous links, and the new enhanced anti-spam filter prevents phishers, scammers, and spammers from clogging workstations and mail servers. Web shielding technology also minimizes the risk of virus and other rogue software infections when downloading and exchanging files.

Availability and pricing

AVG Internet Security Business Edition 9.0 and AVG Anti-Virus Business Edition 9.0 are available at http://www.avgantivirus.biz/avg-business-security.shtml. Multi-packs  are offered in five-seat increments; pricing for a one-year, five-seat license for AVG Internet Security Business Edition 9.0 starts at US $247.99 and a one-year, five-seat license for AVG Anti-Virus Business Edition 9.0 starts at US $159.99.

For more information on the complete range of AVG security products for small businesses, including our File Server and Email Server editions, please visit http://www.avgantivirus.biz/avg-business-security.shtml.

Amsterdam, October 12, 2009 – The popular practice of embedding shortened URL into Twitter tweets, Digg posts and other social networking communications is being threatened by hackers who use the anonymity of these URLs to hide poisoned web pages. AVG LinkScanner® is the only security tool available today that can detect the presence of these poisoned web pages, because it tests the destination of each URL link in real time and does not rely upon blacklists that become outdated as soon as they’re created due to the ever-shifting locations where the bad guys hide.

AVG LinkScanner® is a free utility which can be downloaded at www.linkscanner.avg.com

“The problem with shortened links is that they usually don’t bear any resemblance to the original URLs, which means that users don’t always know what they’re clicking. People click with the intention of going to a specific site, but the link can be easily hacked to send people to a site containing Trojans, spyware, rootkits and other malware instead,” said Roger Thompson, chief research officer at AVG Technologies.

Link shortening services have become popular tools to fit URLs within the 140-word Twitter limit. There are now more than a dozen URL shortening services available, with some built right into Twitter clients and other social networking tools.

Poisoned web pages are the latest way that hackers and spammers deposit malware onto computers in order to steal passwords or recruit computers into botnets. Computers users can get infected simply by clicking on a link, viewing an image, or sometimes just hovering their mouse over a banner. To avoid being caught, the bad guys typically infect a specific web page for less than 24 hours before moving on.

“LinkScanner is the only security tool that can detect the presence of poisoned pages hiding behind shortened URLS,” continued Thompson. “Only LinkScanner can stop people from clicking before it’s too late.”

Amsterdam, October 5, 2009 – AVG Technologies, developers of the world’s most popular free anti-virus software, today announced that its family of free and paid internet security products, AVG 9.0, would be generally available to the market in October 2009. Boosted by significant enhancements in speed and levels of protection, AVG 9.0 is also easier to use and improves end user experience. AVG’s new technology products ensure that users are safe in whatever activities they undertake in today’s online world.

“AVG 9.0 will provide home computer users with a more powerful and more streamlined solution that adds protection without impacting user experience, taking us back to our core strength of low impact, high performance security,” said J.R. Smith, CEO, AVG Technologies. “We’ve always believed that everyone has the right to a safe online experience. With AVG 9.0, we are providing first-class assistance to our users in their development of tools and measures for their safety from all of the threats posed by cybercriminals and identity thieves, whether they’re working, playing, banking or shopping on the web.”

AVG 9.0 Delivers Speed and Layered Security Protection

Because AVG knows scanning time is critical to its customers, scan optimization is a top priority for AVG 9.0’s combined anti-virus/anti-spyware scanner, which employs new technology. This marks files as safe or potentially unsafe during the initial scan, and skips the safe files in future scans unless the file structure changes. As a result, users experience dramatically reduced scan times – by up to 50 percent depending on system configuration – as well as improvements of 10 to 15 percent for boot times and memory usage. In addition, in order to face the increasing threats of today’s online world, AVG 9.0 combines all modern technologies to optimize real time protection. Starting with the foundation of signature-based protection to deal with known threats, AVG 9.0 builds on top of that behavioral, in-the-cloud, and white listing technologies to address the tens of thousands of new threats daily.

Revolutionary in AVG 9.0 is the integration between the Resident Shield, firewall, and identity protection modules. This enables the modules to share malware information with each other, increasing AVG’s ability to detect and remove most malicious types of malware, rootkits, and ID Theft threats, for which signatures have not yet been issued. The firewall enhancements include a complete redesign to reduce intrusive firewall ASK dialogues by 50 percent. This also makes the firewall application significantly quieter and less intrusive, as its new trusted database of applications and application certificates allows the application, without user intervention, to see whether it is safe to allow communication of the application or if it should be blocked. Additionally, because the new firewall works behind the scenes with the behavioral detection technology in the AVG Identity Protection module, it can deliver one of the most accurate detection levels of new and unknown threats.

Additionally, AVG 9.0 delivers improved anti-phishing detection through enhancements to its LinkScanner offering, which can now more quickly and accurately determine whether or not a web page is hosting a phishing attack. This is accomplished by allowing the software to apply more than 100 different potential threat indicators to a page. If the result is inconclusive, LinkScanner then makes a call to the cloud to check a multitude of phishing feeds plugged into the AVG research network to make a final determination regarding threat potential.

AVG 9.0 delivers a solution that is laser focused on user concerns and protection, and is marked by a new look and feel designed to significantly improve user experience and ease of use. Responding to customer feedback, the AVG installation process has been shortened by 50 percent and the user protection process is dramatically simplified. Finally, it is also significantly easier for users to detect and remove any third-party security product that could cause conflicts with AVG 9.0 and interfere with the user’s level of protection.

AVG Gives Users Additional Tools to Fight Identity Theft

According to the 2009 Federal Trade Commission report, as many as nine million Americans have their identities stolen yearly and more than a quarter of the more than 1.2 million complaints received during the 2008 calendar year involved identity theft. Because identity theft takes many forms, from online fraud when shopping and banking on the web to offline fraud when paying a bill at a restaurant or shopping at a store, AVG now provides additional protection against identity theft in the physical world, the AVG Identity Theft Recovery Unit (ITRU).

Added Smith, “Our addition of the identity theft protection and support services is game changing for the security space, as no other vendor is addressing this critical issue with an offering to its customers, free of charge. This is further evidence of AVG’s unparalleled commitment to its customers.

ITRU is a service that will provide AVG customers in the US who have been a victim of identity theft support from a team of dedicated identity theft recovery experts who will help resolve issues, free of charge. AVG is the only security vendor to offer this type of unique service for free to its customer, which will be accessible through the AVG Security Toolbar. AVG sees this as an extension of ie-minute news on the latest cyberthreats: