Local software firm fights off cyber-bugs

Panda Software earns accolades for identifying computer maladies before they infect.GLENDALE -- Panda Software is the scourge of computer viruses and digital Trojan horses, the electronic versions of pestilence -- malevolent, invisible yet highly destructive and even lethal.

Panda Software, whose U.S. headquarters are in Glendale, earned accolades from customers and industry experts because its software can identify such computer maladies -- known as malware -- before they infect computers. That sets the company apart, Panda’s Chief Technology Officer Patrick Hinojosa said. Most security software, he said, can only react to a virus or Trojan horse -- information that appears to users as something they want but once accepted morphs into malicious software.

Since it was established 15 years ago, Panda has become something of an early warning watchdog for the industry and computer users.

Panda technicians reported a new Trojan horse Tuesday called Nabload.U, which was designed to steal online banking passwords of Spanish-speaking users around the world through Microsoft’s popular Instant Messenger chat program, Hinojosa said.

Last week, Panda reported that a computer virus disguised as an animated Santa Claus holiday greeting was invading computers to gather users’ personal information.

Reviewers from Government Computer News, who research the software industry and publish results in the magazine, said in November that Panda’s Platinum 2006 Internet Security software outperformed newly released versions of leading security suites from giants such as McAfee Inc., Symantec Corp. and Trend Micro Inc. PC World Magazine also named Platinum one of its best buys for 2005.

“Hacking used to be the domain of some Asian kids who were trying to outdo each other,” said Hinojosa. “But the malicious-software scene has become more of a criminal activity for profit, so we had to switch from being reactive to proactive, and that culminated in our 2006 product release [Platinum] that came out this fall.”

Panda was founded in Spain and has offices in 50 countries, including the U.S. headquarters established 15 years ago in Glendale, which has about 125 employees.

The company developed a revolutionary artificial intelligence that can detect malware before it does any harm. That’s what separates it from other companies, Hinojosa said.

“When we came out with that [artificial intelligence] technology, that’s when the game changed and that’s why we came out No. 1 on these tests,” Hinojosa said, referring to reviews of the software. “We used to do what they do. We were reactionary to what was out there. Now when anything tries to run ... our software determines in real time whether it’s safe or malicious. And with the speed at which attacks are spammed out, there is no way for reactive software to protect you.”

The old adage, “some PCs must die so others can live,” is no longer true, Hinojosa said.

Retail customers and large companies with 20,000 workstations and more can use Panda’s anti-malware. Between 700,000 and 1 million computers are protected by Panda software around the world, Hinojosa said.

When one of those computers detects malware, it directly eliminates it from the local computer, then sends information to Panda technicians so they can destroy it. After the malware is destroyed, Panda sends the information to other anti-malware companies, who can share it with their customers, Hinojosa said.

“We share the information with all users, then send samples to other security companies because that’s just the right thing to do,” he said.

Anyone who is running any company’s anti-malware will then be protected, he said.

As hot as the company’s been lately, it is still privately held and there are no plans to take it public, said Brenda Christensen, Panda’s director of public relations.

Jim Owen, chief information officer for InsureSuite, Survival Insurance and Guardian General Insurance in Glendale, uses Panda’s software to protect his network of about 345 machines and servers.

“They provide us with security against unwanted intrusions of viruses of various types,” Owen said. “We’ve been with them for ... four years and in that entire time we’ve never had a successful virus intrusion in our software.”

Owen’s technicians receive daily malware updates from Panda.

“It’s automatically updated and distributed, and we don’t have to do anything else,” Owen said. “I would say in the last year they prevented virus infections more than 100 times and I haven’t had to deal with these ... wackos [hackers] in the last few years, so my hat’s off to them.”

Panda’s website address is www.pandasoftware.com.