Malwarebytes

Malwarebytes

Type	Private
Industry	Computer software Security software
Founded	United States of America (2008)
Headquarters	Santa Clara, California
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Marcin Kleczynski – CEO and founder Mark Harris – CFO Rebecca Kline – CMO Pedro Bustamante – VP of Technology Justin Dolly – CIO and Chief Security Officer
Products	Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit, Malwarebytes Endpoint Security, Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Mobile, Malwarebytes Anti-Malware for Mac
Number of employees	<500 [1]
Website	www.malwarebytes.com

Malwarebytes is an American Internet security company, based in Santa Clara, California. It specializes in protecting home computers, smartphones, and companies.

Malwarebytes was formally established in January 2008 by Marcin Kleczynski and Bruce Harrison, who are the CEO and Vice President of Research for Malwarebytes respectively, though the origins of the company date back to 2004, when Kleczynski became involved in forums discussing computer viruses. In 2011, Malwarebytes acquired HPhosts, a website blacklisting company, which tracks blacklisted websites and ad servers. In June 2015, the company announced that it was moving its headquarters from 10 Almaden Boulevard in San Jose, California to a new 52,000 square feet (4,800 m²) office space on the two top floors of the 12-story 3979 Freedom Circle in Santa Clara. The company reported a growth of 10 million users in just one year in 2014-2015 and an increase in revenue by 1653 % in 2014. By 2015 Malwarebytes had fixed over 250 million computers and over five billion malware threats worldwide.

Several of Malwarebytes's products have become well known in the computer world. Malwarebytes Anti-Malware is available in two different versions, one for free download for home computers, and the other a professional version, with a 14-day free trial in advance. Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit uses exploit mitigation to protect vulnerable programs from attack. Endpoint Security, an advanced anti-ransomware technology package, was unveiled in January 2016.

History

Early history and background

Malwarebytes was informally established in 2004.^[2] CEO and founder Marcin Kleczynski, originally from Poland, was still a teenager attending high school in Bensenville, Illinois at the time, and was working as a technician in a computer repair shop in Chicago.^[3] He noticed that whenever infected computers arrived, they would generally reformat the computer, regardless if the infection was only minor. It was only when his mother's computer became infected that Kleczynski learned more about why the virus wasn't directly attacked, finding that neither McAfee nor Symantec would remove the malware from his system.^[4] He later recalled "I've never been as angry as when I got my computer infected", and professed that his mother told him to fix it "under penalty of death".^[5] It was only after Kleczynski posted on the forum SpywareInfo, popular at the time, that he was able to learn how to cure it, which took three days. The company was unofficially founded after this, when Kleczynski conversed and became friends with several of the editors of the forum, who tempted him to buy an unused domain from them.^[4]

With one of the site's regulars, Bruce Harrison, Kleczynski wrote the inaugural version of the company's software.^[5] In 2006, worked with a college roommate to produce a freely available program called "RogueRemover", a utility which specialized in fighting against a type of infection known as "rogues", which scam computer users into giving away their credit card information through fake anti-virus software. RogueRemover proved instrumental in developing Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, and Kleczynski was able to set up a forum which enabled him to improve the software through feedback.^[4] Kleczynski and Harrison formally launched Malwarebytes on January 21, 2008 while Kleczynski was studying computer science at the University of Illinois.^[4][5] Bruce became the VP of Research for Malwarebytes, and further hired Doug Swanson, with experience in freeware development to work for the new company. Marcus Chung, an e-commerce expert who formerly worked for GreenBorder, was hired as chief operating officer.^[4][6] Kleczynski and Harrison reportedly made $600,000 in their first year of selling the software, despite not having met personally at the time.^[7]

Post-2010 developments

In 2011, Malwarebytes acquired HPhosts, a website blacklisting company, which tracks blacklisted websites and ad servers, a necessary development to protect against new internet protocol addresses and web servers which distribute malware, and advise internet service providers to shut down those with malicious activity.^[8] That year, the company had claimed to have removed over five billion pieces of Malware in three years.^[6] The following year, the company launched into the corporate market with an enterprise product aimed at desktop-based anti-malware detection and protection.^[9] In 2013, Malwarebytes acquired ZeroVulnerabilityLabs, Inc., a security research and development company founded by Pedro Bustamante, which protects software applications from "known and zero-day exploits used by exploit kits, web-based vulnerability exploits and other corporate-targeted attacks".^[10] They expanded their malware removal and protection to the Android platform with the launch of Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Mobile,^[11] and launched a USB-based product called Malwarebytes Techbench aimed at helping technicians remove malware.^[12]

In 2014, Malwarebytes received $30 million in funding from Highland Capital, and by the following year it announced that it had treated 250 million computers worldwide, representing about 20-25% of working business computers.^[7] By 2013 it claimed to have removed five billion malware threats from computers in its first five years.^[13] In June 2015, the company announced that it was moving its headquarters from 10 Almaden Boulevard in San Jose, California to a new 52,000 square feet (4,800 m²) office space on the two top floors of the 12-story 3979 Freedom Circle in Santa Clara, California. The new office is more than twice the size of the former office. The company reported a growth of 10 million users in just one year, from 25 to 35 million active users at the time, and an increase in revenue by 1653 % in 2014.^[5] In 2015, Kleczynski was named one of Forbes Magazine's '30 Under 30'.^[14]

In January 2016, Malwarebytes unveiled advanced anti-ransomware package Endpoint Security,^[15] and announced that it had raised $50 million in investment from Fidelity Management and Research Company. Kleczynski stated that the funds would be used primarily for the company's hiring, product development and marketing assets.^[7] In June, Malwarebytes announced a strong growth in sales of over 75 percent in the first quarter of the year compared to 2015, with billings surpassing $100 million. The corporate subscription base for the company was reported to have grown by 90%.^[16] In September, Proofpoint, Inc. CEO Gary Steele joined the company's Board of Directors, with Kleczynski citing his "deep expertise in the security software industry, and his proven ability [at] increasing sales revenue" as the main reasons for his appointment.^[17] In October the company purchased AdwCleaner, a Windows program used to clean adware from computers.^[18]

Services and products

CEO Marcin Kleczynski states that the Malwarebytes engine has an advantage over many of the traditional antivirus programs because it was developed in 2008, when many of the others were developed in the late 1990s and had little idea of what malware would look like 15 years down the line. He states that this makes it "easier for us to adapt as malware evolves".^[4] The New York Times describes their system as a "hybrid of heuristics, behavior and a signature engine that is designed to detect and block malware that other vendors can't detect".^[8] According to Dean Takahashi of VentureBeat, Malwarebytes compliments other antivirus software from vendors such as Symantec and McAfee, with the anti-malware working with the anti-virus software to attack the problem from "different directions". He remarked that Malwarebytes "cleans off machines that are already infected", while "the pro version stops your machine from getting infected in the first place".^[6]

As in the early development days with RogueRemover, Malwarebytes thrives on community feedback. It runs two sub-forums complimenting the main forum, known as "False positives" and "Malware contribution", with the false positives being reported allowing the company to update its database within just hours, and the Malware contribution allowing for them to quickly report what is missing and download it.^[4] Kleczynski had been quoted as saying, "We still try to work like a bootstrapped company. We'd rather build products that our customers buy rather than we sell to them something they may not need.”^[7]

Products

Malwarebytes logo

Malwarebytes has several products, which as of 2011 were available in 36 different languages. Malwarebytes Anti-Malware offers two different versions, one for free download for home computers, and the other a professional version, with a 14-day free trial in advance, offering "real-time protection against malware, automated scanning, and automatic updating".^[8] Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Mobile is a free Android app which protects smartphones from mobile malware, preventing unauthorized access to personal data identifying tracking applications.^[19] It has a rating of 4.4 on the Google Play store.^[20] In 2014, the company launched Malwarebytes Anti-Malware 2.0 with an improved user interface and dashboard.^[21]

In 2014 the company launched Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit, which shields selected applications from attacks by "exploit mitigation to protect vulnerable programs".^[2] Anti-Exploit also comes in a free and paid for version for Windows computers. The free version stops exploits in browsers and Java, whilst the paid product adds protection for a wider range of software applications.^[22] Anti-Exploit received four stars from PC Magazine^[23] and won V3 magazine's "Security Innovation of the Year" award.^[24]

In January 2016, Malwarebytes unveiled Malwarebytes Endpoint Security, advanced anti-ransomware technology which is described as the "first solution to offer multiple layers of protection against unknown ransomware". The company sponsored a survey with Osterman Research into 540 firms in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Germany and found that nearly 40% of companies had experienced ransomeware incidents, of which 34 percent had accounted for loss of revenue.^[15] The Guardian reported that one-fifth of British companies had been charged over $10,000 to unlock their files and that there was an increasing demand for anti-ransomeware technology.^[25] After Endpoint's inception, the beta was reportedly downloaded by some 200,000 businesses and consumers in the first six months of the year.^[15]

Malwarebytes also has numerous tools such as a Junkware Removal Tool to remove adware, an Anti-Rootkit Beta to remove and repair rootkits, StartUpLITE to boost the speed of the Windows reboot and FileASSASSIN to prevent locked files.^[2]

Personnel

As of 2016 key individuals working for Malwarebytes included:^[2][26]

• Marcin Kleczynski - CEO
• Mark Harris - Chief Financial Officer
• Justin Dolly - CIO and Chief Security Officer
• Rebecca Kline - Chief Marketing Officer
• Pedro Bustamante - Vice President of Technology

See also

• Anti-malware
• Antivirus software
• Comparison of computer viruses

References

External links

• Official website