MWC 2014 Video: Avast Detects Over 1800 New Strains Of Mobile Malware Daily

Avast, the Czech developer of popular cybersecurity solutions, travelled to Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to promote its anti-malware apps for Android and iOS.

TechWeekEurope interviewed Daniel Cheng, VP for Asia at Avast, to find out more about the company’s free products, the impact of mobile malware and the importance of network security education.

Best things in life are free

Avast (formerly ALWIL) recently celebrated its 25^th birthday. The company was born in the communist state in 1988, after Pavel Baudiš, a researcher at Prague’s Mathematical Machines Research Institute, wrote a program to remove the original Vienna Virus, and shared it with co-founder Eduard Kučera.

In the years that followed, the software was designed to consume as few system resources as possible, while still providing first-class defence against malware.

Today, Avast protects around 200 million devices, with about 25 percent belonging to SMBs. The company collects data from this huge user pool, which is then analysed using proprietary machine-learning algorithms. This results in about 250 updates per day, issued round-the-clock at just a few kilobytes each.

Avast offers a completely free version of its antivirus since 2001, and currently sells three advanced versions priced from £29.99 to £49.99.

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