Interview with Ondrej Vlcek, CTO of AVAST

Why a free antivirus? Is it sustainable?
We started to give avast! when the company had no money even for a normal distribution campaign. Then we realized that is an incredibly effective way to reach the public .
We make money for our business users, and a small percentage of users who opt for paid product. Is it sustainable? Of course, our revenues grow as do our users free versions.
The Cloud-based protection has become very popular (see Cloud and Immunet Panda). "Avast! has also jumped on the bandwagon?
We have two components "in the cloud" avast!. First, we CommunityIQ , our decentralized network of sensors carried by users malware. And then there WebRep, combining data on malware CommunityIQ with data on the content of sites that we send millions of users of avast! worldwide.
Mobile threats causing growing concern among users of smartphones. Will we see a mobile version of avast! someday?
The danger for mobile devices is at the moment, more myth than reality. The current range of operating systems means that criminals should face the malware to a number of smaller goals, investing more resources for a profit in less power.
However, we believe that the control and certification of applications will be key to long-term safety of mobile phones. And yes, we are working on an antivirus for Android .
You have a great community support avast!. How do you help users and evangelists?
Our users help us just talking about avast! their friends. Our growth has been driven by user recommendations, because we do not invest in advertising. As evangelists, helping new users on the official forum of avast! and are responsible for 60% of support requests we receive. Also test units and software.
Foro Oficial de avast!
We try to be a company that gives people space to help others . The community also helps translating avast! into other languages, at present, avast! Available in 35 languages-all record-and two-thirds of these translations have been made by members of the community.
Piracy did not seem to bother you too much. How many users went to the free and paid versions?
With that license pirate, call the attorneys would not be economically efficient nor have enhanced our reputation on the Web soon talk about this subject, but I can say that our campaign has been effective on both fronts.
The 64-bit Windows systems are safer than those of 32 (in part thanks to PatchGuard ). In the future, what will the 64-bit OS, antivirus protection is less useful?
Safer is a relative term. Our virus protection is still required . We have added detection and removal of rootkits on 64-bit to new versions of avast!, Although less common than 32-bit variants. I do not think our users would say this is "less useful".
AutoSandbox is one of the new features of avast! Free 6.0. How it works
Nothing provides 100% protection. The advantage of virtualization is that if something crosses the barrier, only affects the virtual machine, not the real computer. But we saw that the sandbox was a feature that people used very little in avast! 5.0.
AutoSandbox
With AutoSandbox, we have simplified identifying suspicious files that could be infected and telling the user about them. The user then has the option of following our recommendations or not.
WebRep has all the earmarks of being a useful tool. How do you prevent the data being manipulated? "Will join your efforts with WOT and other pages long term?
WebRep is especially useful because it combines real information on infections with the content analysis carried out by users, and there is an algorithm included in WebRep to prevent someone from manipulating the system.
WebRep
WebRep Our main objective is that users continually add their experiences, this is more important to join forces with other reputable web pages.
How safe are social networks? How can avast! protect against threats such as click-jacking ?
Social networks are drawing increasing attention of criminals. Not enough to block pornographic sites. With WebRep, we are covering not only traditional homepages, but also links Facebooks. The click-jacking is a typical example that people should think before clicking.
What do you know about the security of Windows 8? Are you ready for it? "You will stop offering support for Windows XP?
We have information about Windows 8 and we are making sure they are ready. Anyway, I see no reason to leave XP in the short to medium term.
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