PC Matic underwent major changes in the second quarter of 2016…all the way down to the core…
PC Matic, introduced in 2009, is a cloud based software as a service (Saas), so updates and revisions are included without a revision change. In the last quarter, substantial changes were made to PC Matic and our whitelist real time protection called Super Shield, that we felt that a revision change was warranted.
Although PC Matic includes our whitelist real time protection, since 2010, we have been licensing the Threat Track / GFI / Sunbelt Vipre engine for scan, clean and remediation purposes. Ransomware, and other sources of malware are becoming an epidemic. We need to ensure our security software stops these threats in their tracks. We understood what we needed to improve our security software, and made some major alterations in the process.
Last quarter, our development and malware research team developed our own remediation engine based on an equally proprietary blacklist. Not only does PC Matic block viruses that no other security product blocks, now PC Matic can remove and clean viruses that no other product can. All of the research for our proprietary blacklist and whitelist are done in the United States, unlike any other security product.
Major modifications were made to our whitelisting algorithms in this revision. The most important is the introduction of a separate digital signature whitelist. This adds yet another level of protection for our business customers. Today, a digital signature costs as little as $500, and it is not hard to imagine a cyber criminal purchasing a signature to attack a high value target such as a power company or a federal agency. With our new logic, Super Shield only allows trusted signatures and would block a previously unknown signature such as the example above. Only Super Shield blocks advanced persistent threats (APTs). We feel that this change is an essential element in our push into the business marketplace.
Many other improvements were made to the security logic of our real time protection. Additionally, since our whitelist logic is primarily a static file analysis, its memory footprint is smaller and more importantly, the performance is best in field.
We’ve always had great software, but now it’s even better. PC Matic has been certified through the ICSA Labs, and outscored all competitors in proactive detection ratings, in the well respected Virus Bulletin test, with the closest competition coming in a full 8% behind PC Matic. We are anxious to see the next round of tests from AV Comparatives and Virus Bulletin to see how well our changes fare in their real world tests.
The world needs better security. We got it.
To read the full PC Pitstop Second Quarter Report, you can do so here: PCPitstop-Quarterly_Report_Q2_2016
