ESET is a Slovak internet security company that offers anti-virus and firewall products. ESET is headquartered in Bratislava, Slovakia, and was awarded the recognition of the most successful Slovak company in 2008, 2009 and in 2010.
The company was founded in 1987 when Miroslav Trnka and Peter Paško, authors of antivirus software NOD, partnered up with Rudolf Hrubý. They adopted ESET, the Slovak name of the Egyptian goddess of health, marriage and love, as the company name. In 1998 NOD received the VB100 award of Virus Bulletin, which helped the company establish subsidiaries in the United States, Argentina and Singapore, and development facilities in Poland and Czech Republic. ;Timeline
1987 - The first version of antivirus NOD is created by Peter Paško and Miroslav Trnka
1992 - Founding of ESET spol. s.r.o. in Czechoslovakia
ESET is privately held and has branch offices in San Diego, United States; Montreal, Canada; Buenos Aires, Argentina; São Paulo, Brazil; Prague, Czech Republic; Kraków, Poland; Singapore; and Australia as well as distributors in over 180 countries. According to Gartner, ESET showed the largest worldwide growth rate within the Consumer Security industry for 2011. ESET falls within the Niche Player category of the Gartner Magic Quadrant. According to the Gartner report, "ESET has built a substantial installed base in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, particularly in Eastern Europe, and it has a rapidly growing small and medium-sized business presence in North America. Its Completeness of Vision score benefits from good malware effectiveness in a lightweight client, but it still suffers from weak enterprise management capabilities and lack of investment in market-leading features, such as application control and virtualization support. ESET is a good shortlist option for organizations seeking an effective, lightweight anti-malware solution." According to Frost & Sullivan, "ESET offers high-performance, proactive endpoint security solutions, and the company goes above and beyond the competition to add value to its products by educating both Mac and PC users on how to defend themselves against the latest cyber threats" and it concluded that "ESET will continue to maintain a strong presence in the endpoint security market and provide high value to its customers." It awarded ESET the 2012 North American Endpoint Security Products Customer Value Enhancement Award and the 2011 Global Customer Value Enhancement Award.
Recognition
ESET Endpoint Security was rated Five Stars by SC Magazine, and won the Best Antivirus Software of 2013 award by Maximum PC. It further received the Parent Tested Parent Approved seal from PTPA Media. In 2009, CNET awarded ESET Smart Security 4 the CNET Editor's Choice Award under the Internet security suite category. Reviewers stated that "ESET Smart Security is surprisingly light, consuming around 50MB of RAM when running" and concluded that "For getting all your security tools in one box, Smart Security is an effective and well-respected choice." In late 2013, Maximum PC awarded ESET Smart Security 6 a 9/10 rating and was impressed with the improvements made in version 6. Reviewers were unimpressed with the user interface, stating that "There’s nothing flashy about ESET’s interface. It hasn’t been modernized for Windows 8 or touchscreen displays" although they concluded "We dinged the program last year for letting a few nasty containments through, a rare misstep for a program that’s collected a dozen straight VB100 awards from Virus Bulletin in the past two years. It fared much better in our tests this time around." In 2014, Eset was awarded the Péter Szőr Award for the best piece of published technical security research, by Virus Bulletin. ESET products are tested and certified by Multiple professional Organizations. ESET received 100 consecutive VB100 awards from Virus Bulletin. ESET was also one of the first Security firms to report the internal workings and hacking techniques of the Sednit Hacking group, thought responsible for the 2016 DNC hack also better known under Fancy Bear. A series of very detailed techniques and complete analysis of the hacking tools used was published in a series of PDF's on their Cyber Security log website. On 2 July 2018, ESET joined the Cybersecurity Tech Accord, a public commitment among more than 40 global companies to protect the Cybersecurity of end-users. In September 2019, ESET researchers discovered a backdoor linked to malware used by the Stealth Falcon group, an operator of targeted spyware attacks against journalists, activists and dissidents in the Middle East.
Products
;Home/home office ESET products include tools for Smart Security, Internet Security, NOD32 Antivirus, Cyber Security and Endpoint protection for Windows, Linux, Mac and Android, Anti-Theft, Encryption, and Parental Control. It also has some integration plugins for Kaseya RMM and LabTech RMM.
Remote Administrator
ESET Remote Administrator is a free central management console designed to allow network administrators to manage ESET software across a corporate network. On 25 February 2015, ESET released Remote Administrator 6, a completely re-written platform to administer ESET software from a browser or mobile device.
SysRescue Live
ESET SysRescue Live is a Linux-based bootable Live CD/USB image that can be used to boot and clean heavily-infected computers independent of the installed operating system. The program is offered free of charge, and can download updates if a network connection is present.
