InfoSecurity

January 22, 2007
F-Secure, VSNL offer Internet security solutions for SMEs

CHENNAI -- F-Secure Corp., a leading Internet security company, and VSNL recently tied up to offer security solutions for the SME (small and medium enterprise) segment.

The two companies will jointly offer comprehensive managed security services. These services include F-Secure’s award winning antivirus solution as well as firewall and spam filtering solutions. In addition, a management platform will be available for small and medium size company administrators. This platform will enable administrators to easily manage and get relevant reports related to their internal environment. The security solution will be available through VSNL online platform.

Jari Heinonen, director, Asia Pacific, Singapore, announcing the tie-up, emphasised that security is a very important additional service to be offered to SMEs to ensure harmless and trouble-free Internet access. SME’s will be able to manage their security environment themselves and really see what is happening in the network without installing any management servers or other centralised software in their premises. This security solution is a valuable addition to the existing suite of business services offered by VSNL to existing small and medium business users.

Broadband solicits threats

Heinonen elucidated that security threats are emerging as major problems for govt and private concerns. With onset of broadband penetration, all kinds of viruses are being launched, opening up different possibilities and vistas for hackers to access customers.

F-Secure protects consumers and businesses against computer viruses and other threats from the Internet and mobile networks, with a high speed of response. Its response time to new threats is significantly faster than major competitors. Secure solutions of F-Secure are available for workstations, gateways, servers and mobile phones. They include antivirus and desktop firewall with intrusion prevention, anti-spam and anti-spyware solutions, as well as network control solutions for ISPs.

The business

E-Secure revenue is accrued through corporate, ISP, mobile, and consumer business units. Corp Business sales are through licensed sales through resellers, with significant proportion of maintenance sales, and services sales to large companies through VARs (value-added resellers) systems integrators and IT services companies. 46 percent of the revenue is accrued through corporate business. ISP Business unit offers subscription sales through ISPs to customers and through business ISPs to SMB segment. ISPs account for 36 percent of earnings.

Mobile business unit offers subscription sales via mobile operators and license sales through resellers. Mobile business is growing, though it is small at present. Now we are leading in the mobile business segment. There are ten mobile operators in the world. We are working with seven of them. Presently it is not offering mobile security package in Asia. Its present focus is in Europe, with R&D unit in Finland. Client-based mobile solutions arte offered together with mobile operators for end-to-end customers with Nokia.

Consumer Business Division focuses on retail and e-commerce sales to consumer customers. It has a pact with mobile phone manufacturers, such as Nokia, for pre-installation of antivirus software packages, along with Symbian or other OS, in mobile phones at the factory premise itself.

Total revenues for year 2006 are expected to be between 80 million and 83 million Euros, with estimated 2006 EBIT to be approximately 17 percent. Financial reports for the last thirteen quarters depict F-Secure as the fastest growing anti-virus company.

Forecast for anti-virus market

Frost and Sullivan has predicted in forecast for 2002-2012 that anti virus market will overtake other business like PDA’s and smart phones, managed services, gateway, other servers, PCs and e mail servers. Juniper Research has forecast that anti virus market will grow the fastest. This market was worth US $1000 million in 2006, and will peak to US $4500 million in 2011.

There has been a phenomenal increase in mobile segment. Threats have an impact on the business aspects of mobile market. Total mobile security product sales are growing. There is a need to outsource security infrastructure. In mobile business more and more revenue will accrue from mobile subscribers and small companies. Presently, in AP region, Australia is peaking in this type of service earnings. In future China and India are expected to follow suit. In North America, the market size is big, but the growth is small. US market is price sensitive and services are cheap there. The US is already experiencing certain services.

Future plans for Asia and India

F-Secure intends to be the leading security vendor in the service provider security solution area in Asia Pacific region. It has a marketing sales office in Mumbai, and will be opening a second office in Delhi. It has been in Japan for ten years. The company is contemplating for entry into Chinese market during 2007. China and India, from the population point of view, are interesting for security business. Of late in India, there has been a growth of broadband and Internet services. Its endeavor is to offer security as a service, with easiness, credibility and taking it to the last mile.

F-Secure and VSNL have tied-up to provide data security to VSNL’s customers. VSNL will commence its offering of F-Secure anti virus, firewall, spam filtering and Web filtering solution to its SME customer, together with a Web based management capabilities. The solution can be purchased via VSNL portal. This solution is a part of VSNL VAS offering. In Indian context, SME have about 10/20 upto 50 workstation installations, whereas in Europe SME has upto 250 installations. In India 250-400 installations are considered large. In India SMEs are most willing to buy security solutions from local service providers. In India, SMEs will emerge as the most popular business unit.

Patrik Runald, senior security specialist, F-Secure Security Labs, Kuala Lumpur, revealed that year 2006 witnessed a remarkable step down in attacks by worms, viruses, and other malware. At the same time, however, targeted attacks using backdoors, booby-trapped document files and root-kits became increasingly commonplace.

A spate of engineered phishing scams targeted banks, and organisations such as Ebay and PayPal. ‘Warezov’, one of the largest e-mail worm outbreaks in 2006, could evade detection and generated a huge volume of spam. F-Secure research has revealed dangerous vulnerabilities in ‘Cross Site Scripting’ that may threaten social networking sites.

Asia-Pacific specific issues

The world of IT security is very much global and the threats targeting the Asia-Pacific region was the same as for the rest of the world. However, usually there are some minor differences and trends and that was the case in 2006 as well.

China continues to be a hot bed for malware and in 2006 it overtook the US as the world’s number one country when it comes to bot-infected computers. The reason for this is the number of new Internet users getting online every day in China without adequate security in place.

In Hong Kong, users continued to suffer from phishing attacks targeting local financial institutions and the there were also quite a few phishing websites hosted in Hong Kong during 2006. In addition, a dangerous trend of targeted attacks is hitting organisations in Hong Kong. During 2006 one hacker gang in particular specialised in only targeting organisations in Hong Kong to gather confidential information.

Singapore followed the global trend but one event in particular stood out this year – phishing attacks. Two banks, Citibank and OCBC Bank in Singapore were hit by phishing attacks in July and since then more phishing attempts have been made towards local banks. This, together with the worldwide trend of an increase in phishing attacks, made some local banks introduce two-factor authentication for their online banks.

In India the IT security threat continued to grow and more and more users get broadband Internet access. During 2006 India has had the highest virus/e-mail ratio where one in 20 e-mails contain a virus. This trend started in February with the Nyxem.E virus, which continues to cause problems for Internet users all over India. As Internet usage continues to grow exponentially, so will the IT security related issues such as malware, phishing and spam.

F-Secure, Kaula Lumpur, Malaysia, functions as the regional headquarter with regional management and local technical support for the region. F-Secure Security Lab at Kuala Lumpur is responsible for software development and research functions. Malaysia was selected as a key hub for Asian operations for its well-qualified human resources, the country’s initiative to encourage high tech companies to set up business and its strategically optimal time zone. Given the time difference between the F-Secure labs monitoring the global malware situation, work shifts are conveniently split without much overlap. In this way, F-Secure is able to maintain its promise to respond faster to virus outbreaks than its competitors.