Avira Launches 2013 Antivirus Security Software Line; Extends Protection from Computers to Consumers

Avira today announced the Avira 2013 product line, which includes Avira Free Antivirus, Avira Antivirus Premium 2013, Avira Internet Security 2013, and Avira Internet Security Plus.

The 2013 version of Avira’s Free Antivirus software adds 6 new security features making it the most comprehensive free antivirus products on the market. Avira’s premium products have 8 new features. These new features give consumers a more secure browsing experience by protecting them from Internet scams and threats, in addition to keeping their computers free of viruses and malware.

“With over 100 million users worldwide, our goal with Avira 2013 was to offer protection to people no matter what device they use, and we did that by adding many user oriented features to this release, making it the most feature-rich solution we’ve ever made,” said Sorin Mustaca, product manager and data security expert at Avira. “We’ve also kept the resources footprint small, so users will not notice any slowdown in computer performance.”

The following new features added to the Avira 2013 family of products are all designed to protect not just computer devices, but also computer users — wherever they are and whatever device they’re using:

  • Avira Protection Cloud – Avira’s leading cloud technology
    identifies malware faster by uploading suspicious files for instant
    analysis. (Available for paid users)
  • Browser Tracking Blocker – Gives users control over their
    privacy while browsing the internet by blocking trackers that gather
    data about your browsing activity.
  • Website Safety Advisor – Protects users from scams, phishing
    and suspicious sites by displaying safe, low-risk or high-risk icons
    on the search results and any webpage they visit.
  • Social Network Protection – Notifies parents and children of
    suspicious or worrisome activity on social networks (such as predators
    or your child being bullied online) so they can take appropriate
    action.
  • Android Security – Safeguards users’ Android phones and the
    valuable data it holds. Users can locate it when lost, lock it and
    even wipe the data remotely.
  • More Frequent Updates for Free Users – Avira Free Antivirus now
    updates every 6 hours instead of every 24 hours, giving users more
    current protection.
  • Network Folder Scanning – Shared folders like Dropbox and
    network folders are becoming more common, and with it comes the
    increased risk of spreading malware. Avira now scans network folders
    in addition local folders to keep computers free of infection.
    (Available for paid users)
  • No Advertising Pop-ups for Avira Free Antivirus Users Users
    who install Avira’s SearchFree toolbar will no longer have pop-up ads
    displayed to them. The SearchFree toolbar includes Browser Tracking
    Blocker and Website Safety. As always Avira’s paid products are
    without advertising, independent of toolbar installation.


PBR Moves Enterprise Apps with appzero from Datacenter to Rackspace Cloud

This webinar is for anyone interested in, or responsible for moving enterprise applications to or from datacenters and clouds. It will be of particular interest to Cloud Service Providers (CSP) and Managed Service Providers (MSP) looking to increase their Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) by giving their customers a solution that easily migrates applications to their cloud.
When Pabst Blue Ribbon (PBR) chose to move its datacenter to Rackspace, applications quickly took center stage. One of the challenges was how to effectively move highly modified, but largely undocumented, production apps. PBR’s consultant Virtessential addressed that challenge using appzero’s zapp migration to automate identification, extraction, and migration of their Windows server apps to the cloud.

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8×8 Gets New Contact/Call Center Patent

8×8, Inc. today announced that it has been awarded a new patent related to its contact/call center technologies. On September 25, 2012, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued United States Patent number 8,275,116, entitled “Networked Contact Center.”

The patent relates to, among other things, a networked contact center that includes multiple platforms to host multiple tenants. Example embodiments of the invention include receiving a message associated with one of the tenants and identifying one or more of the platforms associated with the message. The invention also enables the networked contact center platform to access a data location that is both associated with the tenant and shared by two or more of the multiple tenants.

Since its establishment in 1987, 8×8 has been awarded eighty-three (83) United States patents covering a variety of voice and video communications, signaling, processing and storage technologies.


Mimecast Gets $62 Million for Email Archiving

Mimecast, a provider of cloud-based email archiving, security and continuity for Microsoft Exchange and Office 365, has today announced that it has secured $62.15 million in Series C funding led by Global Private Equity Firm Insight Venture Partners, with existing investors Dawn Capital also participating. Mimecast plans to use the funding to accelerate the development and deployment of new technology, and to support plans for rapid expansion in the U.S. market.

Founded in the U.K. in 2003 by Peter Bauer (CEO) and Neil Murray (CTO), Mimecast has grown rapidly, with over 50 percent year on year revenue growth recorded in six of the past nine years. Today, the Company has over 6,000 customers globally – including 70 percent of the U.K.’s top 100 law firms – and over 1.5 million users worldwide.

In addition to growing its existing business within the European, American and South African markets, Mimecast intends to use the investment to drive innovations in corporate email. The Company’s technology has already played an instrumental role in changing the way businesses deploy email; leading the transition from fragmented LAN-based infrastructures to a single platform cloud solution, Unified Email Management (UEM). Mimecast will now focus on continuing this evolution, using its Software-as-a-Service technology to create an Information Banking platform that allows businesses to unlock the inherent value stored within corporate email.

“Today’s businesses are as dependent on email as ever but, increasingly, email struggles to keep up as the way we create, store and share information changes,” Peter Bauer, CEO and co-founder, Mimecast. “At Mimecast, we believe email needs to be rewired if it is to continue to deliver real value to businesses. Building on our history of innovation, we are working to make email more collaborative and more interactive to realize the true value of the vast amount of unstructured data in email stores. We believe that the future is a more interactive archiving model, where IT folk and end users alike can derive more value in real time, on a day-to-day basis on any technology platform they choose to use. The cloud has the potential to democratize information management and deliver these kinds of powerful productivity tools to businesses of all sizes, rather than just being the preserve of the largest enterprises.”

“Email is the most important means of business communication and, better than anyone else, Mimecast delivers a true integrated solution for secure and accessible email,” said Jeff Lieberman, managing director, Insight Venture Partners. “Mimecast has already achieved strong success and with their product superiority, the industry’s move towards cloud solutions and a very large market opportunity, we believe that Mimecast is poised to achieve high growth and become the global leader in unified email management. Insight is delighted to share in this journey with management and existing shareholders.”


Cloud Computing: Stuck in the Mire Getting Java Apps to the Cloud?

Java players Azul and CumuLogic have teamed up to create what they say is the first integrated, truly elastic PaaS-enablement platform by combining CumuLogic’s Java-based Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) with Azul’s memory-elastic Zing runtime (i.e., Java Virtual Machine).
The move is supposed to make life more worth living for Java developers trying to get to the cloud who find PaaS environments a hassle or whose mission-critical apps wind up TCO-challenged SLA defects despite JVM tuning and complex provisioning schemes. (Sound familiar?)

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Send PaaS to CAMP

OASIS, the XML open standards body, is quickly establishing a very powerful leadership role in the Cloud standards arena as well.
This includes standards like TOSCA, for Cloud orchestration and therefore a foundation for Cloud Service Brokering, KMIP for unifying enterprise encryption Key Management across these multiple Cloud providers, and SAML for federated Cloud Identity, also for joining up disparate Clouds.
Also new to this mix is ‘CAMP‘ – Cloud Application Management for Platforms, which will focus on developing standards at the PaaS layer.

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Cloudy data sovereignty in Europe (part one)

When considering cloud, the inevitable security questions arise: where are your data centres? What happens to my data? How can I ensure the decision I am making does not expose us to risk?

Blatantly ignoring cloud in today’s competitive environment is not a viable option and nor should it be. 

There are a multitude of security areas that encroach on cloud solutions, varying based on whether you adopt a public, private or hybrid cloud approach and whether you use SaaS (Software as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service) or IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service).

In this two-part article we shall focus on the most common public platform in use, Software as a Service (SaaS), expected to be worth 11bn Euros in the next year according to Gartner (compared to expectations of 4.7bn Euros for IaaS and 923m Euros for PaaS).

Security in the cloud should be approached …

Cloud Expo Silicon Valley Speaker Profile: Rich Wolski – Eucalyptus Systems

With Cloud Expo 2012 Silicon Valley (11th Cloud Expo) due to open in under six weeks’ time at the Santa Clara Convention Center, CA, let’s introduce you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical program at the West Coast conference…

We have technical and strategy sessions for you dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing & Big Data, but what of those who are presenting? Who are they, where do they work, what else have they written and/or said about the Cloud and/or Big Data solutions that are transforming the world of Enterprise IT?

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