Avast translates consumer success into better business security

Vince Steckler has a problem with the Czech Republic. No matter how successful his anti-virus firm Avast becomes, the authorities make it no easier for him to stay in their country. During V3.co.uk's recent visit to Prague to sit down with the firm, Steckler spent several hours beating away yet another interrogation by an over-zealous residency visa official.

So why did a man who was until a couple of years ago senior vice president of worldwide consumer sales at Symantec, and before that head of its Asia Pacific business, give it all up to live in the Czech Republic?

The answer lies in Avast's almost unstoppable growth since it launched a free version of its product in 2002. According to the firm, it's now the most popular in the world, used by more than 127 million people in over 30 languages.

This is an astonishing feat given that the firm spends no money on marketing, employs only around 150 people and has one office, in Prague. So why should businesses care about a firm that seems hell bent on dominating the ‘freemium' market?

"Our objective is to get as many free users as possible, but if they use it at home then hopefully they'll also bring it into their business where they'll pay for it," said Steckler.

"At the moment there's a lot of use of the free product inside small businesses but over time we'd expect more and more users to move to the [paid for] business products. We take a very soft approach to the misuse of our free product."

Around 20 to 30 per cent of Avast's paid users are small businesses, but they also benefit from the firm's massive presence in the consumer market, each customer endpoint providing vital threat intelligence which the firm uses to help protect all of its users.

This emphasis on a user community, coupled with a highly automated approach to processing and monitoring threats, means that Avast can keep an extremely lean team, barely reaching double digits, in its virus labs.

The knock-on effect of this, and the fact that no money is spent on sales and marketing and that the community - in the free product at least - provides primary support, means that more money is ploughed into R&D, claims Steckler.

"We don't need 3,000 people in India answering the phones like Norton because our community does [online support] ... and business support is through the reseller in the first tier and then we do the second tier," he explained.

Strategy aside, all successful security firms must be able to deliver with good products, so how is Avast's approach any different?

"Our philosophy is to stop the attack before it gets onto the user's computer. The number one attack vector we see is infected web sites," he said.

"We stop the page from loading where most of our competitors might allow it to load then try to stop the virus executing, so we'll start with a web reputation tool to stop you getting to that malicious site in the first place."

In terms of other threats on the landscape for the small business, Avast is working to bring out a Mac version of its product - proof that the Apple PR team has been a little economical with the truth about Mac security, according to Steckler.

"Don't believe the adage that they're more reliable. I've got loads of Macs and sometimes you need to switch them off and on again just to wake them up," he said.

"This goes against the Apple corporate message that if you have a Mac you don't need to worry about viruses, but actually malware writers aren't interested in Macs because there aren't enough of them around yet. If they become really popular it'll be a different story."

Apple's closed ecosystem, however, is working well from a security standpoint in the iOS platform, and rival Google's Android platform is a future threat, Steckler added.

"Android is wide open and it's very simple for viruses to propagate there, but Apple's is a closed ecosystem. Apple is actually kicking Google's butt in the tablet market. Android tablets have failed in the market so far. It's unusual for Apple to have the best and cheapest product."

With converts flocking to the company daily, a couple of small business products on the way and some big name customer wins such as the NHS, it's pretty unlikely Steckler will be leaving the Czech Republic anytime soon.