Malwarebytes means business with latest antivirus offering

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Malwarebytes has launched a business version of its anti-malware product, after the consumer edition was reportedly downloaded more than 200 million times.

Fernando Francisco, Malwarebytes managing director for EMEA, shared with IT Pro the reasons for the business edition's launch.

"We have seen more large companies coming to us and asking for help so we realised we needed to develop an enterprise product, as we could not fulfil their needs before," Francisco said.

It gives IT administrators the ability to install and manage the product across multiple machines and servers, as well as producing detailed reports via a single console.

Traditional antivirus software is too slow to catch new and polymorphic threats.

Malwarebytes has developed three versions of the offering to cater for all sizes of business.

"We have a Pro version of the product for individuals, an SMB version that is for companies with up to 99 users and then we have the enterprise edition, which is 100 seats and upwards," Francisco said.

The reason for the increased demand from corporate entities is because traditional antivirus software is too slow to catch new and polymorphic threats, Francisco claims.

"[With a traditional antivirus] the supplier gets the sample and delivers the cure, makes a signature and after that they update their database. But by the time they collect the sample, create the signature and release, there is a lag time [when] a lot of people [can get] infected," he said.

Malwarebytes differs, Francisco told IT Pro, in that it has a number of intelligent heuristics on the product and a real-time protection model that is constantly looking for malware and zero-day traps.

However, as its products are more focused on immediate and future threats, the company recommends running them in parallel with other antivirus offerings.

"We do not aim to compete with the big guys in terms of legacy viruses we do not deal with viruses that have been out in the wild for three, five or ten years that traditional anti-viruses can handle well," he explained.

"We are more focused on zero day, polymorphic types of malware threats. This is where our expertise is," he added.

Jane McCallion
Deputy Editor

Jane McCallion is ITPro's deputy editor, specializing in cloud computing, cyber security, data centers and enterprise IT infrastructure. Before becoming Deputy Editor, she held the role of Features Editor, managing a pool of freelance and internal writers, while continuing to specialise in enterprise IT infrastructure, and business strategy.

Prior to joining ITPro, Jane was a freelance business journalist writing as both Jane McCallion and Jane Bordenave for titles such as European CEO, World Finance, and Business Excellence Magazine.