Corporate
Comodo in the News - Video Coverage
CNN Headline News
Eye on America
Entrepreneur of the Year for Information Technology/Software in New Jersey
Melih Abdulhayoglu, Comodo CEO
Comodo in the News - Press News Coverage
Frankfurter Neue Press (September 30, 2008)
http://www.rhein-main.net/sixcms/detail.php/rmn01.c.5192372.de/v2_rmn_news_article
Frankfurter Neue Press finds Comodo Firewall to be safer than the standard Windows Firewall. They recommend Comodo as the best Firewall solution to protect against hacker attacks.
PC World Italy (August 2008)
Features Comodo Firewall Pro 3.0 in article on Software Downloads (CD/DVD)
PC World Germany (July 2008)
In a section on malware being used to steal your identity calls Comodo Firewall Pro a solution to the problem
NJ Biz Business Supplement (June 2008)
Extensive feature on Melih Abdulhayoglu, Comodo CEO, winning Entrepreneur of the Year for Information Technology/Software in New Jersey
The Ultimate Freeware Handbook (Published By PC Explorer April 24, 2008)
Step-by-step guide to installing Comodo Firewall Pro. David Neild calls CFP a "powerful tool"
PC Magazine (March 2008)
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2236657,00.asp
In the "Best Free Software Feature", Comodo Firewall Pro 3.0 listed under "11 Critical Security Apps" as "The Best Free Firewall". It praises Comodo Firewall Pro's "versatility and tough protection."
Web Host Industry Review (July 2007)
"EV SSL for everyone" focuses on Melih and Comodo extensively in their efforts to make EV SSL accessible to sole proprietorships in addition to larger companies
PC World Germany (April 2007)
Lists Comodo Firewall Pro 2.4 under its "Freeware, Shareware, Demos" Side Box
In feature on 10 Best Firewall Programs, Comodo Firewall is listed under "Gratis für Forgeschrittene" - Best freeware for advanced users (along with ZoneAlarm Free)
Computer Shopper (April 2007)
"List of Favourites" for computer software. Lists Comodo AntiVirus 1.1 under its favorite trials (DVD Only).
PC Magazine (February 27, 2007)
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2090808,00.asp
The Best Free Software of 2007, Neil J Rubenking gave us the following write-up:
"The new kick-ass choice for free firewall protection, Comodo Firewall keeps hackers out and keeps unauthorized programs from accessing the Internet, even tricky ones that sneak around normal program control. And it resists being forcibly terminated. It works as well as all but the very best for-pay firewalls."
PC Magazine (September 5, 2006)
Editor's choice for the Best Stuff lists Comodo Firewall as the Best Free Firewall.
Home PCs Russia (September 2006)
Free PC security article featuring the same story as PC Magazine above in Russian.
PC World Italy (September 5, 2006)
http://www.pcworld.it/showPage.php?id=135&template=giornale
"Comodo Firewall Pro guarantees security against internal and external attacks, protecting the PC from the snares of the network through continuous monitoring. Also protects personal information from identity theft and free updates whenever they are collected online update. Focuses on a simple, intuitive interface that makes it easy the first configuration. There are no licenses to buy and no additional cost."
Business Trend Quarterly Q3 (July 2006)
Comodo placed an ad in the publication promoting SSL certificates, HackerGuardian, Content Verification certificates, Comodo Firewall Pro and Corner of Trust Logo.
Bank Technology News (February 2006)
Banks are increasingly looking to online security to stay current in user trust. Boiler Springs uses See Verify Trust from Comodo as an "alternative approach"
Comodo in the News - Online Coverage
Hive Five Winner for Best Windows Firewall: Comodo Firewall Pro (October 14, 2008)
http://lifehacker.com/5063280/hive-five-winner-for-best-windows-firewall-comodo-firewall-pro
October is Cyber Security (Un)Awareness Month (October 2, 2008)
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2008/10/october_is_cyber_security_unaw.html?nav=rss_blog
Komando's Q & A: Secure 64-bit Vista (September 11, 2008)
http://indystar.gns.gannett.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080911/TECH02/809110305/1004
Comodo CEO On EV SSLs, Site Seals (August 30, 2008)
http://www.practicalecommerce.com/podcasts/episode/578-Comodo-CEO-On-EV-SSLs-Site-Seals
Back up everything you own with free set-and-forget utilities (July 11, 2008)
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13845_3-9986218-58.html?hhTest=1
Secure shopping online (June 8, 2008)
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article4076499.ece
Five Software Tools to Speed Up Your Day - Ditch the fax machine
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,145251-c,software/article.html
5 Star Rating on Backup product
http://www.gtdownload.com/free-download/System-Utilities-category/
Backup-Restore-subcategory/Comodo-BackUp-view-details.html
Eleven Ways to Bodyguard Your PC
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2283504,00.asp
The Tech FAQ - "A poweruser's dream come true" (March 2008)
http://www.tech-faq.com/blog/comodo-firewall-pro-30-a-powerusers-dream-come-true.html
Techworld - "Comodo hails malware removal guarantee" (February 25, 2008)
http://www.techworld.com/security/news/index.cfm?newsID=11529&pagtype=all
PC Magazine - "Comodo Firewall Pro 3.0 is all things to all people" (December 18, 2007)
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2240712,00.asp
Download.com - "Comodo offers up its dragon-sized treasure of features for free." (November 28, 2007)
http://www.download.com/Comodo-Firewall-Pro/3000-10435_4-10775568.html?tag=lst-1
Comodo Firewall and BOClean = A Great Security Suite
http://www.uberreview.com/2007/08/nod-32-comodo-firewall-and-boclean-a-great-security-suite.htm
The Chris Pirillo Show - Software Firewall Protection (video)
http://chris.pirillo.com/media/2007/07/06/software-firewall-protection
15 free security programs that work
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9026125&source=rss_news10
Web 'safe' mark may elude new merchants
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/24/AR2006122400201_pf.html
Companies may not qualify for the online seals of approval big retailers get
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16347736
New Web 'safe' mark may elude new merchants
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-12-26-safe-seal_x.htm
Comodo C.E.O and Chief Security Architect Excerpt of follow-up Radio Interview with Computer America
October 8, 2007: For nearly a decade Melih Abdulhayoglu, Chief Security Architect and CEO of Comodo has been exploring technologies that provide online security and safety for both consumers and businesses. In a recent follow-up interview with host Carey Holzman of Craig Crossman's ComputerAmerica, Melih discussed how Comodo has been actively working to make the Internet more secure, more authenticated, and more verifiable for free for consumers.
Click here to listen to the audio file of the interview.
Excerpts of the interview with Melih Abdulhayoglu's follow. (The broadcast aired on October 8, 2007 at 7:00 PM PST. The host was Carey Holzman (CH), the author of a number of publications including "The Healthy PC").
Comodo Firewall Pro (new version 3.0) availability
Carey Holzman: Welcome back to the show. Melih is with Comodo. When you were here last time you were speaking about Comodo Firewall version 2.0?
Melih: Correct
Carey Holzman: And now?
Melih: And now it's Version 3. It's in beta now and it's going to be released very soon.
Carey Holzman: So where shall we start.
Melih: Well let's start with when it's going to come out first.
Carey Holzman: Is it out yet?
Melih: It's out in our forum as a BETA version. People can go download it and play with it.
Why current approach from other vendors is flawed
Carey Holzman: This new firewall would include HIPS. What does that mean if it is going to include HIPS?
Melih: The name of the game now is prevention not detection. Detection is dead - long live prevention and that's what we are going to talk about today. Detection is good but now it is all about prevention. You know it's like having a burglar alarm that only recognizes certain burglars. There is malware which we do not know about - and these unrecognized viruses go through without notice and that's why we have a huge problem. The days of the anti virus, and the way we fight viruses are, well, gone and dead. We have to start preventing malware. There are 3 steps that one has to follow: Prevention, Detection and Cure. Just like you have a house with a door, the door prevents people from coming in and then you have the burglar alarm in case the door breaks down. Then, you have insurance if both fail. We need to start bringing that into computers. Today we only have a half working burglar alarm. That's called the anti virus unfortunately.
Carey Holzman: Well, I like your analogy there.
Melih: I am looking at a site VirusTotal that reports on malware. In the last 24 hours, there has been 18,135 new malware and only 2 of them have been detected by at least one anti virus engine. So what happens to the rest - they get onto your computer without being detected. And that's what we want to change.
Carey Holzman: It definitely needs to be changed because, look, viruses are not going away.
Melih: It's exactly the point. I mean look at it. Now your computer has to check all the files you have in your computer - literally 10's of 1000's of files to see if any of those files have viruses on it.
Carey Holzman: It checks forever. It does not work very well.
Comodo's New Approach in Firewall Pro V3.0 is based on White List Technology
Melih: Checking for virus once they are on your computer is a losing battle. So the current default allow system is bad because it will let anything in and then check whether it is good or not. No! No! No! We have a new system now, it's a default deny. I will deny until you've proven to me that you are good enough to get in and that's the difference. And that's the difference we are going to make.
Carey Holzman: Why can I not just use my Windows Firewall, why is it not good enough, why should I get this new firewall from Comodo.
Melih: Well the problem with Windows Firewall is it does not prevent attacks. It detects some of that but it does not have good outbound capabilities. What I mean is when there is a malware in your machine you need to know if it's making a connection to the outside world or not. A firewall which has good outbound capabilities provides that to you. It tells you, "hey there is something here in your machine making a connection to the Internet" and that is very very valuable information. That alerts you and stops you from doing something wrong.
Carey Holzman: It's like a coin toss where they allow or not. It is almost random whether to allow it or not. How does Comodo deal with this?
Melih: Well that's a big big big area. I mean Comodo deals with this by creating the world's biggest safe list. What we have done is we have a team of people whose job is to simply identify what is a good file and what is not a good file. We've got a database of under a million good files now.
Carey Holzman: Known good files. You recognize them and you know that they are safe.
Melih: Correct. And by that way, we do not bother the users by asking that. So we prevent Pop up Fatigue. Pop up fatigue is going to be the thing of the past with version 3 of Comodo Firewall. We only ask the user if we do not recognize the file. And as we continue to update our database, it will recognize more and more files.
Carey Holzman: Well I am glad to hear to that.
How Comodo Protects Against Drive by Download Threats
Carey Holzman: Let's talk about the ways people are getting infected now with the drive by download attacks.
Melih: I mean sometimes you just visit and don't even click on things and the site executes a Buffer overflow attack. What that means is that it finds vulnerability in your system or browser or messenger system and it injects the code straight into your machine without you even knowing about it. Drive by download attacks are the biggest problem that we have today, one of the biggest threats.
Carey Holzman: Let me ask you this. If someone has Comodo Firewall - are they safe?
Melih: Very much so. But the beauty with our version 3 of our firewall is once you have it you can almost certainly bet your bottom dollar that you are not going to get malware.
Carey Holzman: That's a pretty big statement. Say it one more time for me.
Melih: Once you have our version 3 of our firewall, unless you disable it you are not likely to get malware into your system.
Carey Holzman: That's a bold statement. I got some customers that have a gift for getting themselves infected and I know they would be perfect to see if it actually does what you say.
Melih: The reason why we can say such a bold statement is because the way we protect PCs is changing now. What we do is only allow good applications to execute in your machines. It's just simple as that. If we don't know an application, we simply do not give it access to your CPU so it can not execute and get installed on your machine. It's as simple as that.
Carey Holzman: I got to tell you. It sounds fantastic.
Why Free?
Carey Holzman: Now our listeners want to know how you can give it away for free.
Melih: Well the thing is we wanted to build our brand and we thought about it and we said we could give away a free pen. But we thought, hey that's old news. Why not make worlds best firewall and give that for free and let's see which one increases our brand awareness. Guess what - the firewall did. The idea is about building a trusted brand for Comodo.
Carey Holzman: I think you doing a great service for the Internet community at large and keep up the great work and thank you so much for joining us again.
Melih: Thanks a lot and have a great day.
To download the current version of the Comodo Firewall Pro, please visit http://www.personalfirewall.comodo.com. To download the new version that is still in BETA, please visit the Comodo Forums at http://forums.comodo.com.
Comodo C.E.O and Chief Security Architect Interview with National Public Radio's Breakfast Bytes
August 4, 2007: Innovative and free security products for real life; Felicia King and Ray Koukari interview Melih Abdulhayoglu, CEO and Chief Security Architect of Comodo. This was a very interesting show that discusses many of Comodo's free security tools. Felicia and Ray have years of experience in the computer field. Felicia owns Quality Plus Consulting, specializing in security, disaster avoidance and recovery servers, workstations, and domain infrastructure. Ray is an instructor at Gateway, and has been in the IT field for over 25 years.
Click here to listen to Part 1 and Part 2 audio files of the interview.
An edited transcript of the interview with Melih Abdulhayoglu follows (The broadcast aired on August 4, 2007 at 9:45 AM CDT).
Ray: Good Morning this is Ray Kourkari and Felicia King. We're Breakfast Bytes and we've got a great show lined up for you today. We have special guest the CEO and Chief Security Architect and go ahead please, let's try his name.
Ray: Welcome to our show Melih.
Melih: Thank you very much for having us.
Ray: okay, and you have a great company, and you are located where? In California?
Melih: Jersey City actually, good old New Jersey..
Ray: yeah, in Jersey City, and you have got a fantastic products that I know our listeners are going to want to learn all about. Especially some of the things that we really like is that they are free.
Melih: Indeed!!
Ray: Okay, why don't you tell us some things about the company - about why you started?
Melih: Sure! Comodo was started in 1998, and the reason why we started is to provide security and we have a different business model and in that we believe that we can provide free security to consumers while making money from enterprises, and so everyone's happy - the consumer get it for free and it seems to be working quiet well.
Ray: Fantastic! Because we want that! So your model is that to the consumers you are trying to keep the product free and to the business class users, you charge them obviously to offset that cost?
Melih: Indeed!
Ray: Okay. Fabulous. So tell us about he product line, as I know this is pretty exciting for our listeners and I know it's for me.
Melih: Sure! One of the biggest issues that we have on the PC's is that we don't know what sort of malware we have in them. We could have a malware making a connection to the internet and giving out your personal details.
Ray: Exactly!! Your banking information for example.
Melih: So how would you know that? In order to know that you need to get , what is known as a software PC firewall. According to independent tests we have one of the most secure firewalls available to consumers and we offer it for free. A firewall is an important part of your security layer. So firewall is one of the the products we have.
Ray: Right. This is what we always tell our listeners - these are the keys - we have to have a great firewall. Be it hardware or software firewall and In this case it's a software firewall.
Melih: Hardware firewalls are great, but hardware firewalls do not tell you if someone is trying to make a connection from within your PC to the internet.
Ray: That's correct.
Melih: A software firewall tells you just that, which is great!! It's like if you went to a shop, and you see everything is tagged. If you try to get, let's say, some piece of clothing out of the shop without removing the tag - the alarms will go off!!
Ray: Exactly right.
Melih: That is what a software firewall will do for your content. If anything is being taken out - the alarm will go off.
Ray: And I have not tried your product and I'm running a 64 bit server on my notebook so I haven't had time to load this stuff and look at it. The question I have, though, on the firewall is: "Is it intuitive enough that an average home user would not have to always 'over-ride, over-ride, over-ride"? In other words, is it intuitive so that they could say: "OK, Yes. This (message) is something that I should be concerned with but this other (message) is not"?
Melih: We try to give as much description as possible (in the firewall). And we have around 350,000 users every month installing this product.
Ray: Wow!
Melih: We also have an amazing forum, where we give help and our users give help. So, let's put it this way, you will not be stuck.
Ray: and the site our users can go to is www.comodo.com, - that's really easy. So okay, go ahead.
Melih: so the next product is what we term is an anti-malware product.
Ray: okay
Melih: We have an Anti-Virus product that is very much complementary to any AV product.
Melih: The biggest problem with these kind of products is how it works. Let's give an example. Let's say a virus is a criminal and the anti-virus product is the police. The police is looking to find criminals that fits an identity. That is how antivirus works. They try to match the signature of the virus, but virus that are new and do not have a signature. So the more protection we can offer with different products ... the better. We have a malware detection product called BoClean, that is a complementary to any antivirus product.
Melih: It was initiated because of one of the nastiest malware originated in late 90's called Back Orifice. So BoClean, was named after that...
Ray: That's a great product. So anyone go to you site, they would start with anti malware and then download the firewall. Right?
Melih: Indeed. And there's a link for all the free products, you can download and install, use and if you have any problem, any questions you can go to our forums and get the help from the thousand's of users we have there.
Ray: That Great!
Felicia: I wanted to make a comment on the BOClean because I actually have tried the product. I was very pleased to see that there is no negative reaction between Symantec antivirus and BOClean. Thumbs up for your product.
Melih: Thank you very much. Let me now tell you about our new release of our firewall product. We are about to release our version 3 in around September time for firewall which is going to introduce the new level into security architecture whereby we introduce prevention into the equation. Today we do everything for detection. And we are going to make sure that we can prevent new malware like in a Day Zero attack and make sure they do not succeed. That's the next product we have for our users and again that for free.
Ray: And for our listeners point of view, this level of protection is usually combated at the corporate's level by an another piece of hardware and software to prevent Day Zeros attacks. And you are going to do that with this free firewall.
Melih: Firewall like this is often of Enterprise quality
Felicia: I want to point out to our listeners that having a good software based firewall is really important because when you travel your corporate firewall does you no good. I
Felicia: I want to ask you whether the new version of the firewall will have 64 bit support. have been recently testing the 64 bit firewall and there is a gap between the services offerings that's out there in the 64 bit firewall and I don't know if your product supports 64 bit
Melih: The version 2.4 what we have in the forum, does not support 64 bit but the next version will. We have to get that in quality in September.
Ray: What platforms, what operating system you currently do support.
Melih: Our products support are from windows 2000 all the way to XP service pack 2. Unless you have vista machine or 98 machine we wouldn't be able to support you for firewall or BOClean support every platform from windows 98 up to vista
Ray: And the September release is that going to help with vista?
Melih: Most definitely Vista X64 bit compliant and you would be able to be compliant from windows 2000 up anything
Ray: okay, you can make a lot of people happy here I think
Felicia: I have been very excited, because I have been recently testing the outpost firewall after a week of testing it and I can no longer send invoices by email with quick box.
Melih: oh!
Felicia: That's a major problem, and other way of funky things are happening too such as my access to the camera is not working quite as well.
I am excited to try out this 64 bit version of the Comodo firewall in September.
Melih: The new firewall works with a huge white list of all good applications and that's how we get prevention in worked in. We only let good executables run and the reason why we were able to do that is because we are also in certification authority. What that means is we certify companies before we issue them. You know that yellow padlock in the internet when you do shopping. We are the guys; we are the second largest in the market place. So we have already the infrastructure to validate executable files. So we have verified 600,000 of applications in our safe list , so that we know what is the application is, so we know what is it and we are able to give that descriptions to our consumers. And that is growing around 3 to 4 thousands new applications a day.
Felicia: So what's the next program you like to tell us about?
Melih: Yes we launched a beta version solution to prevent Buffer Overflow attacks. That protects over 90% of the buffer overflow attacks where sites inject malware onto your computer. Drive by download attack I don't know whether you have heard about them or not "drive by download attack'. You go to a website you got a malware in your machine how does that happen. The way that happens is a bad the website injects a nasty malware. Well, we have got the little application that checks that and you know so far it can be able to stop over 90% of these types of attacks. And it's a nice tool application available as a stand alone ... later this year it could be integrated with our firewall. .
Ray: So users no need to worry because this would come as an normal firewall update.
Melih: It would indeed
Ray: Okay.
Melih: The next product we have for our users that is free is VerificationEngine. The main problem we have in the internet is We go to a site, how do you know that you are on the on the site that you think you are .
Ray: Exactly, today I was on a site that I thought was my bank's but it automatically redirected me to some other site that I am not sure I want to go to.
Melih: Right. you don't know if it the bank or not.
Ray: right
Melih: You know, you go to pay pal website, you go to some other website, and you don't know whether you are on the legitimate website.
Ray: right
Melih: Today, we can not authenticate what we see online so we cannot authenticate the website I am in. Now for that we have got a tool called VerificationEngine, available in the comodo.com website.
What it does is gives you a visual indicator, it draws a border around the screen. To tell you that hey! This is an authentic site. And all these sites are validated by Comodo. To make sure they are real and legitimate.
Ray: How often would your company update the number of the authenticated sites?
Melih: Daily Basis
Melih: There is around some 300 to 1000 growing, that is growing around 6000 a week.
Ray: Wow! Okay. And these are verified website that have been authenticated?
Melih: Right, mainly banks, corporations, financial institutions and mainly the banks in US
Ray: Because that's what fraudsters are targeting businesses and banks right?
Melih: Correct, because so that's what we verified because that's where the users are going to interact with and give their confidential details.
Ray: Exactly.
Ray: This product does it integrate with internet explorer, does it integrate with firefox, does it integrate with safari, etc?
Melih: Yes, this is works with Firefox, works with IE; we don't have yet the opera, or safari support
Ray: Okay, you have got this tool and I if I go to this site, you tell me, it would give the border is a good site or a bad site
Melih: It only tells you if it's a good site, because the problem to identify a bad site is a complex process. So instead of identifying bad site, one has to simply identify the good site.
Ray: So you gonna tell us that your company has verified it as a valid business.
Melih: Correct, we tell you it's a Comodo authentic site.
Felicia: This goes back to the argument that it's better to use white lists rather than trying to catch bad things with black lists.
Melih: Exactly Felicia! And not only that. The number of malware is increasing and there are millions of malware out there and its increasing. So it would be very very difficult to keep up-to-date. Instead of working with a system of "allow all" and then try to get rid of bad stuff, we work with a white list or what is known as known as "D" for "deny all". In an allow all, this is based on a black list which lets everything in and then go figure out of which is bad and of kick them out. Our way, you're not coming in unless your on the list so that nothing bad causes damage. So that is the system we created.
Ray: So with VerificationEngine, how does it say that you're on a good Comodo, authentic site, is it just the security emblem in the web page?
Melih: it actually gives you a green border on the top of the screen, and its easy to see and easily you can change the color.
Ray: okay, no I think green is good is good.
Ray: Okay we have cover so far a firewall which sounds great, anti malware and VerificationEngine authentication. And we have got a few things to go but I think we could have a quick one minute break and when we come back we will continue with the big products you have got right now.
Ray: Welcome back! This is Ray Gregory!
Felicia: This is Felicia King!
Ray: In BreakfastBytes, we have got a special guest today. CEO of Comodo Melih Abdulhayoglu.
Ray: Melih is the CEO and Chief Security Architect of some fabulous products from Comodo. That's Comodo.com. Hopefully the listeners would go there. We have been talking so far about the Firewall and the malware product you have and the website authentication which I thing is fabulous because this is when we take out our credit card and actually gonna put it down. I try and make sure the site is safe. I am looking at the site, I make sure, is there HTTPS? Is there lock on? Do I see an SSL up there? Do I see my secured authentication and making sure its there. If I doubt, then I don't go forward. So I am gonna try this tool and if I get a green light - I know it is legitimate.
Melih: Correct! With green It's a legitimate site. If not ...it won't give a green light.
Felicia: I think we should install this program this evening.
Ray: you know what ....I am going to do that. I am going to do it for our listeners in the next week show and see what happens. Ok. You have got some other products you want to get through.
Melih: Sure!
Ray: Lets continue on. You have got big one coming up!
Ray: We have got lot of complaints all the time about Antivirus.
Melih: We have an antivirus product. And it still is in beta stage. But we have many many users...users in beta stage. The interesting thing about the antivirus product is, it has ....not only detection, because, antivirus products ...detects.... detects spy and viruses. This has got prevention built in to it as well. So if you have got Day Zero attack. Let me tell you a quick background first of all on Day Zero. What virus authors do before they release it to public, they check it against well-known antivirus products out there to see If they will catch it or not. They make sure it does not catch it and then they release it.
Ray: or they make sure it modifies it and does not see it any more.
Melih: Yes Exactly! The problem is a virus ...any virus will cause damage. How do you prevent that? With our antivirus, we have concentrated on putting prevention into it. So that any unknown executables, any malware is an executable...It's a program...an application.... Any unknown application is going to be prevented from running... then we gonna ask the user. ...give him description. Do they want to run it or not? It turns the antivirus...from detection into prevention product. That's what our antivirus product. It's still a beta product. But it's a stable beta product.
Ray: the versions or software it supports?
Melih: It supports from Windows 2000 to Window XP Service Pack 2.
Felicia: Now we read from some magazines that free antivirus products not being as effective as paid for versions. Well that's just not the case. Sometimes, the free ones are really fantastic and better than paid for versions.
Felicia: This is important of the white lists because this a preventive technique ... not evaluating things once they are in. Essentially, with your products you are saying you can't come in.... unless you are already authenticated from the white list of verifiable executables.
Melih: yes. After all, how many new executables do you put into your machines on daily basis? Not Many? Right?
Ray: not many no.
Melih: Software that everyone uses like MS Office, is in our safe list anyway. Because, we have already evaluated it. It would not cause any issues. Using black lists - we are playing a catch up. We are loosing in the detection technologies. This is why the world of security has to change and start making preventing key. And it's no good to say that everyone else around the world gets infected and we will protect ourselves. Because the reason is, those machines will then be turned into bot army and start spamming up. We have to give affordable security to everyone. People in countries where...Salary is $50 a month can't afford to buy a $50 security package. We need to secure those machines. Because each machine is a powerful tool that can be used against us... in terms of spamming. It has CPU power end connectivity. So, that needs to be protected. And that's why we are doing this.
Ray: Fabulous...we have...other products to review.
Melih:Indeed...We have free email certificates...what it is? Many email clients like Outlook, are capable of doing encryption and digital signing. All you need is to enable those with, what is known as email certificates. And Comodo was the first company to start offering trusted email certificates for free. Trusted email certificates for free to consumers.
Felicia: Well as for as I am aware that there are some companies offering that.
Melih: Correct. There are other companies that offer un trusted email certificates that will give you warning. Comodo was first to give email certificates from a trusted source. Your email client is not going have an issue with that. It's a great little way off encrypting your emails. Here is a question I ask people. How many percent of your email would you like to make public? They say about 5% or 10% and I ask them.... How many percent of emails would like to encrypt? Oh! Only one percent. What happened to the rest?
If they answer more than 0%, they should start encrypting their emails.
Ray: hmm
Melih: How to do that? You come to Comodo website. Get a free email certificate. And start encrypting your emails.
Ray: Fabulous!
Felicia: Yeah. In fact I say it about two and half years ago. I had the desire to be able to encrypt emails I was sending to certain individuals. I would love to encrypt all of my emails. Frankly, if everyone would encrypt, I think that would eliminate spammers because your computer could be figured to say well if this is not the certified, authorized email would just kill it.
Melih: Yeah spot on. Excellent! We also have a secure email solution on our forum - but it's in beta.
Felicia: I am gonna try that
Melih: You got to try that and give us your feedback. So please try it, it is stable enough to use. I use this software in my machine. It's a beautiful little product. Now first time ever... you can send encrypted email using PKI, digital certificates yet the recipient does not need to have a certificate.
Felicia: I think Ray and I would be trying this in emailing each other.
Melih: Yes. Go ahead.
Ray: O.k. So this will work in office 2007?
Melih: Not a problem.
Ray: Ok.That is exciting
Felicia: o.k we are going to coordinate here in test.
Melih: What we do in all our security products what we do is identify the problem and try to solve.... because we are not very much driven by profit in the consumer segment. It gives us the flexibility of actually solving the problem rather than trying to create a blot ware, to justify the price point.
Felicia: You bring up an excellent point. One of the main concerns that numbers of my IT friends have brought up is about how heavy the known products are...like Symantec corp. or Norton internet security. And when client buy new computers and they turn on certain features, and then everything dies. It's just because of the blotware.
Melih: Unfortunately, they must justify by the prices they charge by throwing in all the different features. We can provide clean, soft, efficient help to the people.
Felicia: You bring up another point. what I really like about your software and the concept of the software, its not this blotware. Big package from the other companies just don't work right. Actually, one of my biggest complaints is against Zonealarm firewall. I hate it now. Because their free personal firewall that used to be just a firewall now wants to take over your email and your antivirus and your system. Even the free basic personal firewall product I am not gonna use it anymore because of that fact. They just decided to take over your home machine and I think that's the wrong because then programs start stepping on each other and fighting. And I know I had Symantec corp.'s antivirus in my machine and I had Zone Alarm personal firewall. I did this update and next thing I know my outlook is blowing up. So I say I throw Zone Alarm in the thrash can.
Melih: I think that can be prevented by the number of people who are jumping and shifting to Comodo. When we launched last year we had about few thousand people a month and Now, only one year later we have in excess of 350,000 people a month. And that's growing very very rapidly...monthly basis.
Felicia: Well! You know anybody that has chosen Zonealarm, I tell people to stop using it.
Melih: And you know what people are loving about Comodo is our accessibility. I take part in the forums, Our developers take part in the forums. People can put their wish list. Lets say, I would like to get this way. They can come and interact effectively, chart the future of security product that they are using. Is there any other company? Because, who are they building these products? If not for our users? Who are we gonna listen to? Our users! There is a open market for them to come and say I want this I want that...we have a wish list on every release. ...There is a wish list into our products.
Felicia: Well! That's great. A complaint about Symantec and Norton products. Its impossible to touch with the companies, to get a Esupport even in the instance of buying a Symantec corporate antivirus, enterprise level antivirus client that you paying a lot for with you buying large volumes of licenses, You are on hold for two hours, if you are gonna talk to a human.
Ray: Right!
Felicia: This is ridiculous!
Ray: Yes it is! We gotta move on! You should have a couple of products you want to talk about. We are running out of time...Wanna talk about back up products
Melih: We have a back up product that is nice and easy to use. ts free again. You install and put your schedules and it will back up things to either to your CD, DVD, or FTP or a different storage might happen in your network
Ray: Wow! How to get access to the product?
Melih: o.k. If you go to the Comodo and look for the free products menu. It will take you to the site...at the bottom, there's Comodo back up.
Ray: o.k.
Felicia: I am going to try this. With regards to the FTP. So, This would be really really cool.
Ray: Yes!
Ray: Anyway we are going to test. It's a great product. You also had a daily scan? What was that about?
Melih: Correct!
Ray: that's a paid for product
Melih: Well. Actually you can get one scan for free. or more regular scans, it's a paid service. For the first time, you want to test them once...you can get it for free. What it does? It checks with your system have any vulnerabilities or not? Imagine the way the hacker would scan your machine. This would scan your machine. If I am a hacker on Internet searching for things, this is the way it would do it. It would effectively attack your machine. To see.... if it has any vulnerabilities or not.
Felicia: what's the name of that program again?
Melih: It's called Hackerguardian.... hackerguardian.com. It's available in the Comodo's main website. It's under the 'Free PCI Scanning'.
Ray: So let's wrap up - We got two minutes.
Melih: It's all about preventing. Today we do not prevent, malware coming into our system. It simply detect it once it's been to our system. We are going to change it. I believe Comodo is well positioned to do that. Because we have our Certification Authority background. And we have desktop security background. From combining the two, we can create an amazing safe list, which is a must if you want to create a prevention system and we have the security products. The next version of firewall that we have, you can literally, Install, forget. If you have a clean system, you can bet your bottom dollar you are not going to get malware into your system. It's a total malware prevention system, new kind of Firewall.
Felicia: I have to agree with your assessment and, ... its new.... because, first time I have heard ...a firewall that is utilizing this trusted certificates, actually certifying the authenticity of these executables in order to create the white list.
Melih: We have done this firewall. What does it protect against? Firewall today is limited to only your network. What we have done is, we have taken it to the next level. We have created a kernel firewall which means your kernel is secured. After all, a malware can not get your CPU, INTEL or AMD CPU, to execute it can not cause a damage.
Felicia: It protects against root kits then as well.
Melih: Totally you cannot install a root kit with our system.
Ray: That is fabulous!
Melih: It's a total prevention system. So version 3 of our Firewall, Its part on shift in the way you secure yourself.
Ray: For listeners the version 3 would be out by...?
Melih: by September. Beta is going to be out some time next week.
Ray: So listeners, the beta would be out some time like next week. May be Thursday or Friday.
Felicia: I think I will try that one!
Ray: I will too! The live version you expect that would be out some time in September
Melih: That's right!
Ray: That's Exciting stuff! Felicia and I can't thank you enough for being on the show, spending your valuable time being an CEO you have got many other things to do but listeners I know you'll appreciate the fact that your company is committed to free software, that's going to help them. You have some products with Anti malware, Anti spy ware and Firewalls, and you have got some great things with Back ups with the Website Prevention.
Melih: Indeed!
Ray: That's exciting! I thank you!
Felicia: Absolutely!
Melih: We thank you too for having us here!
Ray: It's been a great show. We gotta run.
Comodo C.E.O and Chief Security Architect Excerpt of Radio Interview with Computer America
March 20, 2007: For nearly a decade Melih Abdulhayoglu, Chief Security Architect and CEO of Comodo has been exploring technologies that provide online security and safety for both consumers and businesses. In a recent interview with host Carey Holzman of Craig Crossman's ComputerAmerica, Melih discussed how Comodo has been actively working to make the Internet more secure, more authenticated, and more verifiable for free for consumers.
An edited transcript of the interview with Melih Abdulhayoglu's follows. (The broadcast aired on March 19, 2007 at 7:00 PM PST. The host was Carey Holzman (CH), is the author of a number of publications including "The Healthy PC").
CH: Our guest tonight is the Chief Security Architect and CEO of Comodo, Melih Abdulhayoglu. They are the makers of a free firewall.
CH: You have an interesting product, can you tell us about it?
MA: Thank you. Sure. We thought, "Why not build one of the best firewalls around and give it away for free?". And [then] we went ahead and did that.
CH: I like that thought, but while there are lots of good firewalls, the problem is that people don't know how to use them. They don't know if an application wants to access the internet, whether they should allow it or not. So they end up clicking "No" and ultimately locking themselves out of their computer, or they "allow all" which defeats the whole point of having a firewall. Melih, could you tell me how Comodo is different from other firewalls, paid or free?
MA: Sure. When the firewall is asking this question, it is checking to see what sort of executable application is running on your computer trying to make a connection to the Internet. The reason it is asking is because it does not know what that specific application is about. So we thought, "Why not create a huge safe list with a safe list of applications so that your firewall will ask you less often?"
CH: Yes, that's mind blowing. Usually 90% of us use regular programs, yet firewalls force people to allow access each and every time one of these people tries to access that program. How many applications do you have in your safe lists that are known to be safe?
MA: We have around 300,000 applications at the moment.
CH: Wow, 300, 000!
MA: And we are getting 3,000 executables a day to review. On daily basis, we keep updating our lists.
CH: And what about some hacker putting something in your safe list?
MA: That's where being the world's 2nd largest Certification Authority comes in. We are the guys who put the padlock on websites, so we have full Public Key Infrastructure. What that means is we have the ability to digitally sign a file so that any modification to it can be protected. If any modification is made, our firewall will know about it and it would reject it.
CH: Is your firewall fast and light-weight or is it going to strain my system resources?
MA: A firewall is all about controlling and stopping malware from making a connection from your home to the Internet. So, how do you test firewall security? This is known as the "leak test". What you do is see is if your firewall is leaking or not. According to independent tests, in terms of having best scoring leak test, we scored top of the list. And we do it in a way whereby it don't take too much system resources.
CH: OK but I could be sending data right now and just not know it
MA: That is one of the biggest problems facing us today. I mean, look at spam. 80% of it comes from Zombie computers that have not been protected. Somehow we are going to have to protect all of those machines or else the army of Zombie PCs will deter all of us from using the Internet.
CH: That's true.
CH: Is there any plan of selling or charging for this firewall or other desktop security products?
MA: No, anything in desktop security that we are going to give to consumers is free.
CH: God bless you. So how do you get paid?
MA: Very good question, actually. Let me explain. First of all, why free? Someone has to provide it for free since the problems we are facing today from spam to spy ware are all because we don't have our machines secured. Many people around the world cannot afford $60 or $70 in countries such as China where the average income is about 100$ a month. So what happens is that all of those machines are left vulnerable, and China has the second largest Internet population in the world.
So spam, spyware, and hacking often come from these machines. To solve this problem, we need to create the idea of a secure and trusted Internet. Once we have done that, we need to come up with a business model that allows us to make money from that.
By giving free products to end-users, we are creating a secure ecosystem for our users and our online businesses. In return, businesses pay Comodo to protect their websites. So, the more users we have using our firewall, the more trusted the Comodo brand is, and the more business customers will choose Comodo to secure their online environment. Our customers are happy because they are using our services to protect their websites and consumers are happy because they can do business online confidently.
CH: That sounds like a good plan. When it comes to AV or firewall, I am a big believer in paying money in exchange to getting something back. But with many solutions, you pay to not get anything.
MA: That's a very important point. Imagine that there is a burglar alarm that only recognizes certain burglars but not all burglars. That's the current flawed model for anti-virus solutions. You can no longer use what is known as black listing technologies and only stop known malware.
Let's look it in this way. In the physical world, there is a door. The door is your 'prevention'. Also, you have a burglar alarm. The burglar alarm is your 'detection'. Thirdly, you have insurance. Insurance is your 'cure'. In a security system, you need all three. You need prevention, detection and cure. In today's security solutions, there is no 'prevention' - only 'detection' technologies such as AV and firewall. For example, in our next version of firewall, is going to have what is known as HIPS to include prevention technologies. What HIPS does is, instead of setting the default to be "allow", we are changing it so the default is "deny".
CH: Companies like McAfee seem like they have lost the way. They put in lots of processes, features, and packaging and ended up with product that was heavy. They give you big boxes and charge $20 or $30 more. What makes Comodo different?
MA: Well, first of all, we have the luxury of not charging people, so we don't have to justify the price by including lots stuff that people don't need. You know, adding features for more and more functionality makes the product not feasible.
CH: That's good to hear, and that's promising in the future. I note that on your website "free" means "free for your firewall, antivirus, email security certificate free and password manager free". Tell me about those.
MA: We believe everyone should be offered free desktop security because it's in everyone's interest to create a more secure and trusted Internet. We are the guys that let you encrypt and digitally sign your email for free. We have products like password manager, backup product, and also a very innovative tool called Verification Engine. This solves the problem of not knowing whether graphics on a site, like a credit card logo, are authentic. We have the only technology in the world to verify the web content with VerificationEngine. So, with these technologies, we are going to create a trusted Internet for everyone.
CH: Anything you want to mention in our last few moments?
MA: All we want to gain is our users' trust. As users trust Comodo, they will trust websites protected by Comodo and more business will trust our solutions. That is how we want to Create Trust Online.
CH: So everybody who sees or hears this show, get a free copy of the firewall. If you install it, give us your feedback. Thank you.
