The Czech antivirus company AVG Technologies is expanding. Right at the start of 2009, it announced a takeover of the company Sana Security. The firm based in Redwood City, California specialises in security technologies that protect users from internet identity theft.
“The takeover of Sana represents one of the biggest successes in the field of prevention of personal data thefts. Sana’s unique software, in combination with our security technology, will provide constant complex protection of online identity in real time,” said AVG’s general director J. R. Smith.
Thanks to acquiring the American company, AVG will gain access to personal data and passwords protection system, information on bank accounts and other important data stored in computers, as well as to advanced technology whose activity resembles the human immune system, in other words, it learns how applications normally work. In case the computer is attacked, the harmful program is revealed thanks to the non-standard behaviour of other programs.
Sana Security, including its development laboratories Sana Labs, will become part of AVG Technologies, but it will continue to have its seat in the American Mecca of IT companies – the Silicon Valley.
An acquisition of an American company by a firm that was originally purely Czech is not common on the Czech market, but experts are not surprised in the case of AVG.
“It is definitely not common for Czech companies, but AVG is nowadays a global firm, it belongs among the top companies in its sphere. The acquisition is a logical consequence of what the company started with on the market years ago and in what it has succeeded. Its position in the field of computer security can strengthen further in the future,” said analyst Ondřej Moravanský from Brno’s brokerage firm Cyrrus.
Developers from Brno’s AVG Technologies have had a successful year. The number of users of its program increased by about ten million last year. All over the world there are about 70 million computers protected with their software. The company is one of the biggest world suppliers of security software.
