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(PRAGUE, Czech Republic, March 24, 2010) avast! is the only   more...

(PRAGUE, Czech Republic, March 24, 2010) avast! is the only free antivirus program to win the highest “Advanced A+” rating in AV-Comparative’s last test of on-demand detection of malicious software.

avast! Free Antivirus showed its high performance in malware detection, scanning speed, and the number of false malware identifications to get its “A+” rating. ALWIL Software, makers of avast! Free Antivirus, was the only company that chose to enter a free instead of a paid “premium” product in the competition. avast! Free Antivirus is completely free for noncommercial home use.

“This shows there is such a thing as a free lunch. Yes, with avast!, you can get advanced, full-fledged protection that is free – with no strings attached,” said ALWIL Software CEO Vince Steckler.

avast! Free Antivirus earned an “A+” in detecting the 1.2 million pieces of malware in the AV-Comparative sample while having very few, just eight, false positives. Avast! also had the fourth fastest scanning times out of the twenty tested programs. To read AV-Comparatives full report, click: http://www.av-comparatives.org/images/stories/test/ondret/avc_report25.pdf

“These test results destroy the rumor that free protection is somehow inferior. What is important here is consistency across all tests and, more importantly, giving consumers protection that they are satisfied with. Consumers want antivirus protection that works but one that will not harass them with false positives, slow them down, or empty their wallet and we are happy to provide them with that,” added Mr. Steckler.

The success of avast! Free Antivirus should be no surprise. With over one hundred million registered users, avast! Free Antivirus is probably the world’s most popular consumer antivirus product. The antivirus engine and virus database in the Free program are used across the entire avast! family of antivirus products with the paid products offering additional protective features such as the Script Shield, Sandbox virtualization and the Silent Firewall. Backed by millions of users in the CommunityIQ, the system for automatically reporting new threats, avast! knows more about virus outbreaks than some other AV companies with their heads in the clouds.

(PRAGUE, Czech Republic, March 16) Researchers at ALWIL Soft  more...

(PRAGUE, Czech Republic, March 16) Researchers at ALWIL Software, providers of the avast! antivirus program, have discovered a widespread campaign to infect website advertisements served up on leading online advertising services.

The attack infects advertisements served up by a number of online advertisers, helping place malware on the computers of people visiting leading websites such as Google and Yahoo.

The most compromised services are yieldmanager.com (Yahoo) and fimserve.com (FOX Audience Network) which cover more than 50% of online ads. The list of poisoned ad services is extensive and includes advertangel.com, bannerimg.com, jambovideonework.com, myspace.com, vestraff.com and zedo.com. Doubleclick.com, an advertising server affiliated with Google, is ranked fifth in the avast! Virus Lab list of infected servers by rate of infection.

“The poison ad infiltration method is growing in popularity because it does not require users to click on anything,” explains Jiri Sejtko, avast! Senior Virus Analyst. “Users can get infected just by reading their favorite newspaper or by doing a search on popular topics; the infection begins just after the poisoned ad is loaded by the browser.”

Avast! Virus Labs have named this attack vector JS:Prontexi. It is a JavaScript code which acts as a channel for malware attacks on vulnerable software such as Adobe and a range of zero-day exploits.

“JS:Prontexi highlights the lack of care shown by advertising services providers to actively screen the content they are distributing,” comments Sejtko, “Serving up infected content like this is a double hazard for advertising companies. In addition to reducing consumer trust in their services, they run the risk of being flagged or even blocked by antivirus programs as a source of malware.”

“Consumers shouldn’t immediately accuse their antivirus program of a false positive when a familiar site gets blocked. There can be a real danger,” explains Sejtko. “avast! and Kaspersky Labs, a competing antivirus product, both blocked yieldmanager earlier this year because of these attacks. If these advertising services get too infected, the easiest way to protect our users is to block them completely.”

Since the surge of JS:Prontexi in February, avast! has updated its virus databases to fully protect against this attack vector. avast! sensors in individual computers detect the malicious JavaScript and block it, preventing users from receiving the infection. Much of the data gathered on the spread and prevalence of this poisoned ad phenomenon has been collected by users participating in the “avast! Community IQ”, the firm’s own “cloud” of 100 million endpoints that report on web dangers, helping the avast! experts build better protection schemes.

avast! Free Antivirus is the number one choice in the “2010   more...

avast! Free Antivirus is the number one choice in the “2010 Free Antivirus Buyers Guide” from NotebookReview.com.


“First and foremost, it provides the best protection,” wrote Charles Jefferies in his review of four free antivirus programs. “avast! was significantly more proactive than the other suites, detecting and blocking all four of our test virus files before the download actually started.”

He also gave high ratings to the extra features in avast!, singling out the file recovery database and light firewall.

Tested programs were given numerical ratings for their level of protection, ease of use, performance and extra features. The top selection had the highest total score in all four categories.

NotebookReview.com is a leading source for information and reviews on the newest laptop computers. It is part of the TechnologyGuide.com family of websites on selected technology products.

Ireland edged out France in a tight contest to win the avast  more...

Ireland edged out France in a tight contest to win the avast! 100 millionth user celebration.

Was it the luck of the Irish? Or was it divine retribution for the “Hand of God II”, French striker Thierry Henry’s hand ball which set up France for play-off victory and ended Irish hopes for a place in the 2010 World Cup finals?

We don’t know. But, we do know that avast! got its 100 millionth registered user this December 8th. With the clock just about to hit 11:00 Central European Time, one lucky Irishman kicked his registration into the avast! database just seconds ahead of a Frenchman to win the prize - an expenses-paid trip for two to Prague, home of avast! antivirus software.


But, just the facts: Kevin Bolger, a surveyor by trade, decided to install avast! on his computer. “I heard about it from a friend,” he said. “I just use a computer at work and at home.” He completed his registration at 10:59:04 CET.

What he didn’t realize was the boisterous reaction he set off in Prague. As Kevin registered, avast! employees were gathered around a large-screen monitor to watch the database, shouting out the numbers as registrations reached the 100 million mark.

“I was lucky,” said Kevin. Absolutely. There was less than a second gap between his registration and the preceding Italian. A Frenchman was less than two seconds behind. “I had no idea at all that I could be so lucky that I could win it,” he added.

“Getting our 100 millionth user is a great honor for us – and I’m sure Kevin will enjoy his first-ever trip to Prague,” said Vince Steckler, CEO of avast! producer ALWIL Software. “This has only been possible thanks to our global pool of users who put their trust in avast! for reliable computer security.”

The avast! community is truly international. The two hundred people registering just before and after Kevin came from 48 countries ranging from Algeria to Zimbabwe. Incidentally, Kevin was the only Irishman in this group.

avast! added over 25 million new users during 2009 – and nearly 82 thousand just in the 24 hours after Kevin’s winning registration. It’s a huge jump from the first registration back in 2002 said co-founder Eduard Kucera: “I can remember when we started registering on paper. Then we had just over 10,000 names.”

Enhance and enable your back and front office IT infrastruct  more...

Enhance and enable your back and front office IT infrastructure with Elusiva products. Secure and contain desktops and servers, improving efficiency, managibily and security. Deploy new technologies and seamlessly integrate with legacy systems while leveraging your existing
IT investments.

Acnode is offering 3G PCMCIA cards for R550. Together with t  more...

Acnode is offering 3G PCMCIA cards for R550. Together with this offering you can sign up for a data bundle which ranges from 250Mb/Month to 2Gb/Month starting from R100 / Month.

These cards are refurbished cards from Vodacom. The data packages are exclusive to the Vodacom network and is subject to a minimum of a 6 Month contract.

Prices are VAT Exclusive.

Purchase any Home ADSL package from R89,00 a month from Acno  more...

Purchase any Home ADSL package from R89,00 a month from Acnode and receive 8GBytes local internet traffic per month for free. To find out more, go to our Broadband page from the menu.

iBurst has launched its latest broadband internet for as lit  more...

iBurst has launched its latest broadband internet for as little as R49,00 a month for 40MB of data. You ask if 40MB a month is enough? According to an online net usage calculator, http://mynetusage.info/data-usage-calculator, 40MB data per month will allow users to send and receive around 6 emails without attachments and 6 emails with attachments per day. This is however without any other usage like web surfing or VoIP usage. It will allow for either 8 minutes of web surfing per day or 20 minutes of VoIP usage per day.

From 1 March 2007, iBurst has once again taken a big step to  more...

From 1 March 2007, iBurst has once again taken a big step to ensuring customers get what they want.

iGo Lite and iGo customers will receive a free 200Mb bundle on top of the current data bundle for free while G1 to G9 packages will receive an extra 500Mb for free.

Another added service is that any unused data will be carried over to the following month, and not just the extra purchased bandwidth as it was in the past.

A new product line offered by Acnode is the Business ADSL se  more...

A new product line offered by Acnode is the Business ADSL service. With Business ADSL you are able to connect with options of uncapped bandwidth of up to 1 Mb/s.

The Acnode Group offers accredited IT training for office pe  more...

The Acnode Group offers accredited IT training for office personnel. The course is geared towards improving the computer competency of office personnel in their day to day activities and entails the following:

COURSE OUTLINE

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY 1

NQF level : 3
Number of Credits : 16

COURSE OBJECTIVE

To enable the learner to become computer literate and familiar with the Microsoft suite of programmes and the Internet

Abbreviated Course Content
• The basic components of the computer system and its use in networks
• The Windows operating system
• MS Word
• Excel
• PowerPoint
• Electronic mail and the Internet

OUTCOMES AND COMPETENCIES

Outcome 1 - Demonstrate the ability to access a computer as a local and networked learner

Competence is evident when the learner is able to;

• Turn on the computer.
• Use the Windows Operating system to commence using the computer.
• Login to a network


Outcome 2 - Demonstrate the ability to utilise MS Word and its associated tools

Competence is evident when the learner is able to;

• Access MSWord from the start menu.
• Use MSWord to compose a simple document.
• Use the spell check, grammar and other tools.
• Insert a file, table or object into a Word document

Outcome 3 - Demonstrate the ability to utilise a spreadsheet programme (Excel).

Competence is evident when the learner is able to;

• Access Excel from the start menu.
• Use an Excel spreadsheet to perform basic computations.
• Sort data in an Excel spreadsheet.

Outcome 4 - Demonstrate the ability to use a presentation package (PowerPoint)

Competence is evident when the learner is able to;

• Access PowerPoint from the start menu.
• Utilise PowerPoint to construct a simple presentation.
• Add effects (e.g. animation) to the presentation.

Outcome 5 - Demonstrate the ability to use electronic mail and the internet

Competence is evident when the learner is able to;

• Access the internet.
• Search the internet using a search engine.
• Send electronic mail.
• Reply to electronic mail received from others.


Admission Criteria:
Possession of levels of literacy and numeracy sufficient to understand the material of the course.
Method of Instruction : Lectures (33 hours)
Assessment Methods : Class tests
Assignments
Examination (3 hour, closed book)
Mark Allocation : Class tests + assignments = 50%
Examination = 50%

The Acnode Group supplies the Award winning Avast Antivirus   more...

The Acnode Group supplies the Award winning Avast Antivirus software through it's valued members.

Avast Antivirus is based on the comprehensive scanning technology available since 1988. Featuring fast incremental updates and advanced multi-layer real-time protection of all infection vectors, it safeguards against virtually all kinds of malware.

Avast is ideal for home users to large corporates.

Iburst is endeavouring to ensure that almost 120 schools are  more...

Iburst is endeavouring to ensure that almost 120 schools are able to access iBurst with these two sites alone!

New coverage areas soon to be covered include Wilrowpark (Roodepoort-area), Cape Town CBD, Kuilsriver (Cape Town) and many more.