CEO of ESET North America Andrew Lee Holds Keynote Speech at VB 2013 Conference: Ethics and the AV industry in the Age of WikiLeaks
ESET, the global leader in proactive digital protection with a record of 10 years in consecutive VB100 awards with its ESET NOD32 technology, has earned another VB100 Award, already 81st, from Virus Bulletin, UK-based independent security software testing authority. Its product ESET NOD32 Antivirus 6 scored high in all categories of the latest test on Windows 7 Pro OS. In addition, ESET research teams will have a strong presence at the VB 2013 Conference starting today in Berlin, including Andrew Lee, CEO ESET North America, opening with a keynote speech titled Ethics and the AV industry in the age of WikiLeaks.
In its latest August comparative review, Virus Bulletin has called ESET a “provider with a flawless record” and refered to ESET NOD32 Antivirus 6 as “simple to install”, “very speedy updates” “combining unfussy good looks with comprehensive finetuning controls”. And VB continues: “ESET adds another VB100 award to its tally, maintaining its 100% pass record going back over a decade”. ESET NOD32 technology has received more VB100 awards than any other AV software vendor on the market.
From October 2 until October 4, 2013, ESET researchers are taking part and presenting at the Virus Bulletin 2013 Conference in Berlin with Andrew Lee, CEO ESET North America, delivering a keynote speech.
“The events of the last few years from Bradley Manning to Edward Snowden have brought with them a tranche of new ethical issues. On the one hand the 'old-school' approach is to see malware, detect malware, but it is increasingly likely that in future (if not already) companies will come under pressure from government agencies and perhaps be compelled by law, to avoid detection, disclose data or report on customer activity. Is there a need for a collective response from the industry?,”
states Andrew Lee in his conference abstract which highlights the content and philosophy of his address. “What are the issues around trusting sample or vulnerability sharing with companies known to share (or to be compelled to share) such information with governments?,”
continues CEO of ESET North America.
In his keynote speech, Andrew Lee aims not to provide definitive answers, but tries to open a wider conversation by examining some of the issues and asking the relevant questions.In addition, ESET researchers are presenting the following papers:
- What can Big Data Security learn from the AV industry? – Stephen Cobb, ESET Security Evangelist, ESET Malware Researcher, delivers paper, where he examines the history of pioneering threat data, exchanged over time between competing vendors, private enterprises, public institutions, and non-governmental organizations, sharing of lessons that can inform the evolution of Big Data Security. Big Data Security is this year's hot information security concept, a key element encompassing the use of shared threat data, along with internal data, to detect and mitigate threats to information systems.
- The Real Time Threat List – in this presenatation the authors, Righard Zwienenberg, ESET Senior Research Fellow, Richard Ford from the Florida Institute of Technology, and Thomas Wegele from Avira, explore the shortcomings of the WildList, and introduce their solution, the Real Time Threat List (RTTL).
- ACAD/Medre: industrial espionage in Latin America? - Robert Lipovsky, ESET Security Intelligence Team Leader and Sebastian Bortnik, ESET Latin America Education & Research Manager will showcase the investigation of a series of events of an impactful ACAD/Medre, a signature created for a piece of malware attacking the popular design software.
- Mac hacking: the way to better testing? – ESET Research Fellow David Harley with ESET Security Researcher Lysa Myers will elaborate on Mac security: Macs have fewer threats and there are fewer prior tests on which to base a testing methodology, so establishing sound mainstream testing is tricky. But as both Macs and Mac malware increase in prevalence, the importance of testing the software intended to supplement the internal security of OS X increases too. Their paper looks to examine the testing scenarios that are unique to Macs and OS X, and offers some possibilities for ways to create a test that is both relevant and fair.