ESET receives Bronze Award in the 2017 Gartner Peer Insights Customer Choice Awards for Endpoint Protection Platforms

This week, ESET is extremely proud to announce that it is the Bronze Award Winner of the 2017 Gartner Peer Insights Customer Choice Awards for Endpoint Protection Platforms (EPP).

Awards for top customer-rated companies

The Gartner Peer Insights Customer Choice Awards are well recognised across the industry and aim to identify the companies that customers like the most. Gartner Peer Insights Customer Choice Awards for Endpoint Protection Platforms are the result of verified end user reviews of enterprise-grade users.

The awards are a ranking of vendors by verified end-user professionals – which includes IT professionals or business users who have had experience purchasing, implementing and/or using the enterprise solution they are reviewing. The awards take into account both the number of end-user reviews, and the overall user ratings.

In this particular category, Gartner states that EPP “provides a collection of security capabilities to protect PCs, smartphones and tablets. EPP is an integrated solution that has the following capapabilites: anti-malware, personal firewall, port and device control.”*

Praise across the board

116 end-users reviews awarded ESET Endpoint Security an overall score of 4.7 out of 5 across all criteria including product capabilities, integration and deployment, service and support, and customer experience. As a result, ESET placed within the top four cyber-security companies offering the best endpoint security solutions on market based on end user reviews.

“We are honoured to receive this Gartner Peer Insights Customer Choice Award and we believe it is a true testament to the quality products we provide our customers,” said Jeronimo Varela, Director of Global Sales. “AT ESET, we believe every person and business should be able to enjoy technology safely and we pride ourselves on offering solutions that allow them to do just that. In our opinion, to have near perfect reviews, across the board, from end-user professionals shows we are delivering on what we set out to.”

To read more about the Gartner Peer Insights Customer Choice Awards, please click here.

Gartner press release, Winners Announced for the Gartner Peer Insights Customer Choice Awards for Endpoint Protection Platforms, October 13, 2017. https://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3807164

Gartner Peer Insights Customer Choice Awards are determined by the subjective opinions of individual end-user customers based on their own experiences, the number of published reviews on Gartner Peer Insights and overall ratings for a given vendor in the market, as further described here http://www.gartner.com/reviews-pages/peer-insights-customer-choice-awards/ and are not intended in any way to represent the views of Gartner or its affiliates.

Microsoft released Security Advisory 18002 on Wednesday, January 3, 2018 to mitigate a major vulnerability to Windows in modern CPU architectures. ESET released Antivirus and Antispyware module 1533.3 the same day to all customers to ensure that use of our products would not affect compatibility with Microsoft’s patch.

The first few days of 2018 have been filled with anxious discussions concerning a widespread and wide-ranging vulnerability in the architecture of processors based on Intel’s Core architecture used in PCs for many years, as well as processors from AMD, and even affecting ARM processors commonly used in tablets and smartphones.

The good news is that ESET can help protect against the types of malware that could take advantage of these vulnerabilities.

And, ESET was one of the very first security vendors to allow the Microsoft patch against the flaw to be enabled.

While ESET protects against potential malware infection, you should also take these steps to secure your computers and data:

Make sure your browser is up to date. For Chrome or Firefox users:
- Mozilla has released information describing their response, including how Firefox 57 will address these security flaws.
- Google has stated, “Chrome 64, due to be released January 23, will contain mitigations to protect against exploitation.” In the meantime, you can enable “Site Isolation” found in current stable versions of Chrome to provide better protection.
Make sure you update your ESET software, then update your Windows OS to protect against this exploit. To update ESET:
- ESET Home products (NOD32 Antivirus, Internet Security, Smart Security Premium)
- ESET Business products (Endpoint Antivirus, Endpoint Security, File and Mail Security and Virtualization Security)
Customers should review ESET’s Knowledgebase article for important updates.
See this great collection of tips, articles and recommendations from the Google Project Zero team.
If you have a cloud-based server or have a website hosted by hosting provider, check to see what mitigations they have implemented already to prevent Meltdown.

Ransomware Revolution – Ransomware of Things

Technological advances and their accelerated use have led to a number of scenarios considered unlikely just few years prior, are now within the realm of possibility. The advice going into 2018 from ESET researchers is to back up everything that matters to you, often, by keeping at least some backups offline – to media that aren’t routinely exposed to corruption by ransomware and other malware – in a physically secure location. As the Internet of Unnecessarily Networked Things becomes less avoidable, the attack surface increases, with networked devices and sensors embedded into unexpected items and contexts: from routers to fridges to smart meters, from TVs to toys, from power stations to petrol stations and pacemakers. As everything gets ‘smarter’, the number of services that might be disrupted by malware becomes greater.

Criminals following the money

With data being the most valuable asset, ransomware is set to remain in great demand among cybercriminals. It is important to note that many ransomware attacks are not sophisticated enough or never intended to recover the victim’s data once the ransom has been paid. For these reasons we suggest not only backing up of data online and offline but also implementing proper security measures such as proactively training staff on what phishing emails entail and how to avoid clicking on them and entering any credentials.

Critical infrastructure attacks on the rise

Cyber attacks on the Ukrainian power companies resulted in electricity service being turned off in hundreds of thousands of homes. The implications of this for future attacks of this kind include more than just the power grid but also includes critical manufacturing and food production, water and transport and the defence and healthcare sectors.

Safer for all

This year has seen ESET’s malware analysts continue to help law enforcement crack down on malicious campaigns and, by extension, the criminals spewing them. We are confident that 2018 will bring further successful investigations as we will continue to lend a hand to authorities so that, ultimately, the internet can become a safer place for everyone – except cybercriminals.

Download the full Security Trends 2018 report here