Tag Archives: Corporate News

Today, I am pleased to announce that Kevin Chapman has joined our team as Avast’s new General Manager of our SMB business unit.  I have known Kevin for years, and I am very glad he is joining us.

In this role, Kevin will lead all aspects of our SMB business, including our go-to-market strategy, product management, marketing, sales and support. Kevin joins us with a long background in security as well as great experience working with the channel having spent many years in senior roles at Symantec.  He brings a track record building SMB operations and leading global teams.

Avast CEO Vince Steckler with Avast Threat Labs analysts
In July, we announced our plan to acquire AVG Technologies. Today, I am proud to announce the completion of the acquisition of a majority stake in AVG. So we will operate as a single company as …

 Taking a trip down memory lane with Avast version 4.8.
Beginning in January 2017, virus definition updates will be discontinued for Avast version 4.8.

Today is National Programmers Day! The Avast team values each and every one of our programmers, and we know that we wouldn’t be where we are today without them by our side. The hard work and accomplishments of our programmers, developers and UI team has helped Avast become the world’s most trusted mobile and PC security in the world, and that’s a lot to be proud of!

The Avast Foundation is an integral part of Avast and exists thanks to the hard work and dedication of the company’s 600 employees. Many Avastians volunteer in various non-pro­fit organizations and are interested in playing a part in making both their local communities and the world a better place.

The Avast Employee Fund gives Avast employees the opportunity to help and recommend support for any of the publicly benefi­cial organizations for which they volunteer or support. Upon the selection of an employee‘s proposal, The Avast Foundation gives them the opportunity to help decide how the allotted funding from the Foundation will be put to use.

From left to right: Timofei Semisynov, Nikola Jančiková, Tomáš Flek, Simona Stančeková and Bohuslav Endt.

At Avast, student workers are a special and integral part of our employee base. In order to get a genuine picture of life at Avast through a student worker’s lens, I sat down with five of our colleagues who work in various departments of the company. Although they are each responsible for different functions, there’s one key element that they all have in common: they are the makers and doers behind the most trusted mobile and PC security in the world.

Get to know Marek Chrenko in the following Q&A.
Marek Chrenko came to Avast in the summer of 2014, when the mobile development startup Inmite joined the Avast team. Originally an Android developer, Marek started developing iOS products last year…

As many of you know, there are two security companies that often get confused: Avast and AVG. Shortly after I started as CEO almost 8 years ago, I remember giving a presentation to a large audience about Avast. About an hour later, a gentleman walked up to me and complimented me on how good the presentation was and how he enjoyed hearing about AVG. That was my first lesson in how easy the companies are to confuse.

This confusion is because the companies are so very similar. Both company names start with the letters “AV”. Both started in the late 1980s and were amongst the first few companies formed to fight the viruses and malware nearly 30 years ago.  Both are historically Czech: Avast was founded in Prague and is still based there while AVG was historically in Brno, the two largest cities in the Czech Republic. Both pioneered the free distribution of top quality security products (although to be honest, I must admit that AVG was first and we followed). Both make great security products. Both are innovators with world class R&D teams. Both have most of their users outside of their home Czech market. Both have had similar user bases for many years: about 200M each. And most importantly, both treat their users with respect and consequently each has a large and loyal user base. One slight difference though is that while Avast is a private company, AVG is public and listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Avast Antivirus Nitro Update is lightweight, delivers improved performance and includes our latest CyberCapture technology with zero-second threat detection against unrecognized files.

If you own a PC, you know you hate it when your antivirus software slows you down, so we developed our latest release to be strong and lightweight, with lower system impact to keep your PC running smoothly and protect you from the never-ending attacks we all experience.

So how do we keep the Nitro Update to Avast so lightweight? One way is we use new technology that utilizes the cloud to identify and analyze threats, which means Avast Antivirus Nitro Update is light enough that it doesn’t eat up your system’s resources. Our security software is smaller in size and designed to improve speed, boot time, download time, and system performance in Windows 10.

Windows 10 PCs run faster with the Avast Antivirus Nitro Update than with Windows Defender