ICT Review: AVG Goes Back to Basics with AVG 9.0

New product offerings deliver 50 percent faster speed, improved performance, and ease of use, with industry’s only free identity theft protection

Amsterdam, October 2009 - AVG Technologies, developers of the world’s most popular free anti-virus software, today announced that its family of free and paid internet security products, AVG 9.0, would be generally available to the market in October 2009. Boosted by significant enhancements in speed and levels of protection, AVG 9.0 is also easier to use and improves end user experience. Additionally, all AVG users in the U.S. will benefit from a groundbreaking identity theft offering, powered by a partnership with Intersections Inc., North America’s leading and most innovative provider of consumer identity theft prevention solutions which has served more than 25 million consumers. AVG’s new technology products ensure that users are safe in whatever online or offline activities they undertake.

“AVG 9.0 will provide home computer users with a more powerful and more streamlined solution that adds protection without impacting user experience, taking us back to our core strength of low impact, high performance security,” said J.R. Smith, CEO, AVG Technologies. “We’ve always believed that everyone has the right to a safe online experience. With AVG 9.0, we are providing first-class assistance to our users in their development of tools and measures for their safety from all of the threats posed by cybercriminals and identity thieves, whether they’re working, playing, banking or shopping on the web.”

AVG 9.0 Delivers Speed and Layered Security Protection

Because AVG knows scanning time is critical to its customers, scan optimization is a top priority for AVG 9.0’s combined anti-virus/anti-spyware scanner, which employs new technology. This marks files as safe or potentially unsafe during the initial scan, and skips the safe files in future scans unless the file structure changes. As a result, users experience dramatically reduced scan times – by up to 50 percent depending on system configuration – as well as improvements of 10 to 15 percent for boot times and memory usage. In addition, in order to face the increasing threats of today’s online world, AVG 9.0 combines all modern technologies to optimize real time protection. Starting with the foundation of signature-based protection to deal with known threats, AVG 9.0 builds on top of that behavioral, in-the-cloud, and white listing technologies to address the tens of thousands of new threats daily.

Revolutionary in AVG 9.0 is the integration between the Resident Shield, firewall, and identity protection modules. This enables the modules to share malware information with each other, increasing AVG’s ability to detect and remove most malicious types of malware, rootkits, and ID Theft threats, for which signatures have not yet been issued. The firewall enhancements include a complete redesign to reduce intrusive firewall ASK dialogues by 50 percent. This also makes the firewall application significantly quieter and less intrusive, as its new trusted database of applications and application certificates allows the application, without user intervention, to see whether it is safe to allow communication of the application or if it should be blocked. Additionally, because the new firewall works behind the scenes with the behavioral detection technology in the AVG Identity Protection module, it can deliver one of the most accurate detection levels of new and unknown threats.

Additionally, AVG 9.0 delivers improved anti-phishing detection through enhancements to its LinkScanner offering, which can now more quickly and accurately determine whether or not a web page is hosting a phishing attack. This is accomplished by allowing the software to apply more than 100 different potential threat indicators to a page. If the result is inconclusive, LinkScanner then makes a call to the cloud to check a multitude of phishing feeds plugged into the AVG research network to make a final determination regarding threat potential.

AVG 9.0 delivers a solution that is laser focused on user concerns and protection, and is marked by a new look and feel designed to significantly improve user experience and ease of use. Responding to customer feedback, the AVG installation process has been shortened by 50 percent and the user protection process is dramatically simplified. Finally, it is also significantly easier for users to detect and remove any third-party security product that could cause conflicts with AVG 9.0 and interfere with the user’s level of protection.

AVG Gives Users Additional Tools to Fight Identity Theft

According to the 2009 Federal Trade Commission report, as many as nine million Americans have their identities stolen yearly and more than a quarter of the more than 1.2 million complaints received during the 2008 calendar year involved identity theft. Because identity theft takes many forms, from online fraud when shopping and banking on the web to offline fraud when paying a bill at a restaurant or shopping at a store, AVG now provides additional protection against identity theft in the physical world, the AVG Identity Theft Recovery Unit.

Added Smith, “Our addition of the identity theft protection and support services is game changing for the security space, as no other vendor is addressing this critical issue with an offering to its customers, free of charge. This is further evidence of AVG’s unparalleled commitment to its customers.

The Identity Theft Recovery Unit is a service that will provide AVG customers in the US who have been a victim of identity theft with support from a team of dedicated identity theft recovery experts to help resolve issues, free of charge. AVG is the only security vendor to offer this type of unique service for free to its customers, which will be accessible through the AVG Security Toolbar. AVG sees this as an extension of its ability to provide users with the latest technologies that keep them safe while using the Internet and ensure they are protected from today’s threats. If an AVG user believes they may be a victim of identity theft, they will call the Identity Theft Recovery Unit. Intersections’ experienced fraud specialists will consult with the customer, to help them determine if they have, in fact, become a victim. And, if so, they will obtain and review the customer’s credit reports and enroll them in daily credit file monitoring and alerts for six months. In addition the specialists will work with the victim in wading through the bureaucracy of paperwork required by government agencies to re-establish their identity.

Availability and pricing

The complete AVG 9.0 paid family of consumer products is available now at www.avg.com/home-and-office-security. Pricing for a one-year, one-seat license for AVG Anti-Virus 9.0 starts at $34.99 and a two-year, one-seat license for AVG Anti-Virus 9.0 starts at $51.99. AVG Free 9.0 will be available mid-October and will be able to be downloaded at www.free.avg.com.

For more information on the complete range of AVG security products for consumers and small businesses, please visit www.avg.com.

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