It was time for Kaspersky Labs to take its shot at the total security market, said director of product marketing Peter Beardmore. The 13 year-old security developer has found success in U.S. retail and in Germany and to some extent in Canada. The natural next step for Kaspersky is to compete with the major players in security with a complete security solution for the home and also to tackle the small business market in Canada.
Enter Pure Total Security, a new product that enables one user to centrally manage security on multiple PCs and devices. The new product is being released today and is available at retailers and e-stores across Canada and the U.S. Pure’s competitive advantage, according to Beardmore is that it can leverage cloud computing functionality for the delivery of urgent updates as well as regular updates, signature updating and proactive protection updates for unknown threats.
“We took a hard look at some of the major issues that families are dealing with and also took a look at the competitive spectrum in the total security market. We found that the No. 1 issue is to be free of viruses, Trojans and malware and the next issue was device control,” Beardmore said.
Pure comes with central management capabilities and security tools to help the home owner or the home-based business owner secure multiple systems all from one PC. For example, the user can run all scans, updates, and backup tasks automatically or on-demand; fix security issues; and remotely manage parental controls.
According to the data from Kaspersky’s anti-malware lab, there are 20 newly infected children’s web sites appearing daily. Pure can block inappropriate content from being seen by children. It can also control how long a child is online.PureE even has an answer for cyber-bullying. The software can produce full transcripts of instant messages and other social networking activity, while only allows contact from a pre-approved list of friends. The software can also tag keywords and provide automatic updates in cases of profanity usage or any kind of harassment.
It also prevents private information from leaking out or being shared online.
“I may never get a chance to see my daughter when she’s online, but I have access through the management console and see what sites she’s on,” Beardmore said.
Besides the home features, PURE also serves the many home-based business owners with back-up and recovery capabilities to a local drive or home server. There is password management. Pure puts log-in passwords in an encrypted digital vault of sorts. The user is still able to log into Web sites and applications by simply remembering one master password.
The SOHO market opportunity was not lost of Kaspersky, Beardmore said.
He added that a lot of the users buy off the shelf or from a local channel partner and are looking for “rock solid security”.
“The reality of the situation is that not a lot of products are tailored to the very small or home office type customer and we are launching that exact product for that segment in March,” he said.
Pure, Beardmore cautioned is not a B2B product, but the new product will cater to the small office and be packaged accordingly and available through the proper channels. Pricing has not being finalized but look for packages with five to 10 licenses and by qualified on Microsoft Server and SMB Server 2008 software.
Meanwhile, Pure is priced at $89.95 and comes with a one year, three-user license.