F-Secure Corporation is a Finnish cyber security and privacy company based in Helsinki, Finland. The company has 20 country offices and a presence in more than 100 countries, with Security Lab operations in Helsinki, Finland and in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The company develops and sells antivirus, password management, endpoint security, and other cyber security products and services. With Radar Managed Services vulnerability scanning and Rapid Detection Service as flagship products, the company continues to expand into the corporate market.
History
F-Secure was first established under the name Data Fellows by Petri Allas and Risto Siilasmaa in 1988. Data Fellows trained computer users and built customized databases. Three years later, the company launched its first major software project and developed the first heuristic scanner for antivirus products. F-Secure’ first antivirus product for Windows PCs was launched in 1994. Data Fellows became F-Secure in 1999. F-Secure was the first company that developed an anti-rootkit technology called BlackLight in 2005. In June 2015, F-Secure expanded into the enterprise market by acquiring nSense, a Danish company that specializes in security consultation and vulnerability assessment. The purchase of Inverse Path, a privately owned security Italian consultancy with experience in avionics, automative, and industrial control sectors, in February 2017 continues the expansion of its cyber security services. F-Secure Client Security received AV-TEST Best Protection award for the fifth time in 2016. In June 2018, F-Secure acquired security company MWR InfoSecurity for 80 million pounds.
After the media coverage of Magic Lantern and claims by some AV vendors to purposely leave a backdoor for it in their products, F-Secure announced their policy on detecting these spying programs: "F-Secure Corporation would like to make known that we will not leave such backdoors to our F-Secure Anti-Virus products, regardless of the source of such tools. We have to draw a line with every sample we get regarding whether to detect it or not. This decision-making is influenced only by technical factors, and nothing else, but within the applicable laws and regulations, in our case meaning EU laws. "We will also be adding detection of any program we see that might be used for terrorist activity or to benefit organized crime. We would like to state this for the record, as we have received queries regarding whether we would have the guts to detect something obviously made by a known violent mafia or terrorist organization. Yes we would."
