ESET Ranks No. 379 on the 2009 Inc. 500 with Three-Year Sales Growth of 667.4 Percent

SAN DIEGO August 13, 2009 - ESET, the leader in proactive threat protection, today announced that Inc. Magazine has ranked it among the fastest-growing private companies for the third consecutive year. Distinguished as No. 379 among the top 500 organizations, ESET grew at an impressive rate of 667.4 percent, ranking eighth among the top security companies and 11 in the top 50 businesses in San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, Calif. area.

“Being acknowledged by Inc. Magazine as one of the fastest growing companies is further testament to our continued leadership in the security market,” said Anton Zajac, president and CEO of ESET, LLC. “We attribute our continued success to our loyal customers, product quality and employee dedication.”

ESET develops software solutions that deliver instant, comprehensive protection against evolving computer security threats. ESET Smart Security, an integrated antivirus, antispyware, antispam and personal firewall solution, was named CNET “Editors’ Choice” in April 2009 and finished first among its peers in a leading consumer publication in June 2009. ESET NOD32 Antivirus consistently achieves the highest accolades in all types of comparative testing, including 57 VB100 awards, which is the most in the industry. ESET products are available in more than 160 countries and are represented by an extensive global partner network.

“If you want to know which companies are going to change the world, look at the Inc. 500,” said Inc. editor Jane Berentson. “These are the most dynamic, fast-growth companies in the nation, the ones finding innovative solutions to problems, creating smart systems, and inventing products we soon discover we can't live without. The Inc. 500 list is Inc. Magazine’s tribute to American business ingenuity and ambition.”

Our Comment: Go ESET!

Original Article

Posted by Nancy Pursley in Eset Software at 10:43

ADELAIDE, Australia -

A 20-year-old Australian man has been charged with infecting more than 3,000 computers around the world with a virus designed to capture banking and credit card data, police said Thursday.

The man, whose name will not be released until he appears in an Adelaide court on Sept. 4, has been charged with several computer offenses that carry prison terms of up to 10 years, South Australia state police Detective Supt. Jim Jeffery said in a statement.

Police also uncovered information that will identify other offenders, Jeffery said.

The man, who lives in the state capital, Adelaide, is also accused of illegally creating a capacity to disable computer systems by bombarding them with unwanted traffic from up to 74,000 computers he controlled around the world. This type of sabotage is known as a distributed denial of service attack.

Police have not said whether the man allegedly used stolen banking information to commit identity fraud.

The arrest followed a three-month investigation involving state and federal computer crime detectives.

Our Comment: One down, thousands to go.

Original Article

Posted by Nancy Pursley in Virus & AntiVirus News at 10:38

By Robert McMillan, IDG News Service

The criminals knew what they were doing when they hit the Western Beaver County School District.

They waited until school administrators were away on holiday, and then during a four-day period between Dec. 29 and Jan. 2, siphoned US$704,610.35 out of two of the school district's bank accounts. Western Beaver's financial institution, ESB Bank, managed to reverse some of the transfers, but the Pennsylvania school district was out more than $441,000.

On July 9, Western Beaver sued ESB to try and recover the money, but security experts say that it's just one of many organizations that have been hit in recent months by a disturbing new type of financial fraud that can often leave the victim holding the bag.

Fraudsters are taking advantage of the widely used but obscure Automated Clearing House (ACH) Network in order to pull off their attacks. This financial network is used by financial institutions to handle direct deposits, checks, bill payments and cash transfers between businesses and individuals.

In April, ACH fraudsters moved $1.2 million out of a Sugar Land, Texas, importer called Unique Industrial Products, according to a report in the Houston Chronicle. They did this by hacking into the company's computers and then authorizing 39 transfers to move the money out of Unique Industrial's account. Although the bulk of the money was recovered, scammers made $150,000 from the attack -- not bad for 30 minutes of work.

"ACH fraud continues to grow, especially in this current economic downturn where unemployment is at very high levels," said Jeffery Dertz, a partner in the insurance practice group with Blackman Kallick, a Chicago-based accounting and consulting firm.

Criminals can make millions of dollars per day with ACH fraud, investigators say. And while consumers are protected from this type of fraud, the rules for corporations and organizations are not as clear-cut, so sometimes victims like Western Beaver find themselves having to pay.

Posted by Nancy Pursley in Virus & AntiVirus News at 09:48

SAN DIEGO – August 4, 2009 – ESET, the leader in proactive threat protection, today announced that its flagship ESET NOD32 Antivirus has captured a record 57th VB100 award from Virus Bulletin, the widely-respected independent comparative testing group. ESET NOD32 Antivirus is still the only product with more than 50 VB100 awards and continues to lead the industry with the highest detection rates combined with zero false positives – the winning formula in malware prevention. August's report focused on the Windows Vista platform. Almost one-third of the field failed the test, with only 22 of the 34 entries awarded the VB100 designation.

Virus Bulletin introduced its first VB100 award in 1998, and conducts several comparatives every year, rotating its platforms between Linux, Windows, Windows servers and Novell Netware. In order to display the VB100 logo, an antivirus product must meet two criteria: (1) Demonstrate it detects all "In-the-Wild" viruses during both on-demand and on-access scanning; and, (2) Generate no false positives when scanning a set of clean files. Since the inception of VB100 awards in 1998, ESET's antivirus products continue to boast a success rate of over 96 percent - the industry's highest. Most antivirus vendors have success ratios in the 50 – 75 percent range.

Posted by Kyle Reiners at 17:51