Variety is Good

[rdmaloyjr]

Zone Labs Reaffirms its Commitment to the Consumer Internet Security Market

Dear ZoneAlarm® customers,

Since the inception of the ZoneAlarm firewall over seven years ago, the PC security market has gone through tremendous changes. The hacking community has become more sophisticated and threatening as professional criminals started using the Internet as a tool to commit their crimes. Spyware has escalated and become the #1 Internet threat, affecting nearly every PC user to some extent. Meanwhile, Zone Labs has introduced important security technologies in its ZoneAlarm products to keep its customer base safe from the growing threat landscape.

Recently over the last few years, additional changes have occurred in the Internet security software market. Many firewall companies have started up and tried to make a go of it in the marketplace. While many made little headway, others found a foothold. But today, that trend is reversing. Consolidation and buy-outs in these firewall companies are apparent and in some cases, closing down. One example of this consolidation is with Sygate, a software firewall publisher that was recently purchased by Symantec, which will be discontinued within weeks. Consolidation in the computer Internet security space is a loss, because it gives customers fewer choices and gives hackers fewer devices to have to consider in their bid to take over people's computers.

This notice to you is to reaffirm Zone Labs' commitment in continuing to invest in new consumer security technologies to keep PC users safe and Internet threat free. One example of this is our new Operating System (OS) Firewall that prevents spyware from attacking your computer. Those of you who run ZoneAlarm® Pro, ZoneAlarm® Antivirus, ZoneAlarm® Anti-Spyware, or ZoneAlarm® Internet Security Suite are using this revolutionary technology right now. More innovations in both security and user-friendliness are on the way. In short, we are here for the long run and our products are going to continue to offer innovative technologies to keep you ahead of the dangerous world of hacking and other Internet threats.

We thank you whole heartily for choosing to be a part of our ZoneAlarm community. We will, in turn, be your Internet security partner for many, many years to come.

The Zone Labs Security Team

[polonus]

Hi rdmaloyjr,

Thanks for the kind words. Well what is appreciated here, like with the Avast product, and maybe there are more software houses here that follow such a policy, is the way ZA always took its responsibilty for the whole of the Internet Community. Building a commercial quality product and offer a form of basic security for free. And I think this commercial attitude is more and more missed in modern days, where aggresive repositioning without the end-user in mind is a creeping under the skin mentality shown by many software vendors. It is not favourable for the common good of general end-users, but this to-day has low-priority. All this said, we must hope that ZoneAlarm hangs on to the formula it always presented, and might even borow from good open source software to make its product even better in 2006.

polonus

[rdmaloyjr]

I hope I didn't give anyone the wrong idea.   I'm not a part of Zone Labs.  I just copied and pasted "Zone Labs Reaffirms its Commitment to the Consumer Internet Security Market" from the ZoneAlarm website.  I thought it would be something everyone would like.   Zone Labs seems to have a good attitude instead of a market domineering attitude.  I turned that line red to get everyone's attention.

I reminds me of statements on avast!'s & Kim Komando's wesites where they said if everyone had a antivirus viruses wouldn't spread so quick & be as much of a problem.  That was the rational for alwil offering a free version of avast!.

This I believe is a true statement "...gives hackers fewer devices to have to consider in their bid to take over people's computers".

[neal62]

Well IMHO it's nice to see the reaffirmation from Zone Labs. Nice to know at least one large company has it. Maybe Microsoft could benefit from doing something like this.