TechPulse 360

John Maddison, vice president of core technology solutions, Trend Micro

Speaking at the Cloud Summit Executive conference in Mountain View, Calif., John Maddison, vice president of core technology solutions for Trend Micro, was so bullish about the prospect of cloud computing that he’s willing to bet the future of the anti-virus company on it!

“Our vision is that most of the processing and analysis of computer threats will happen in the cloud and that endpoint clients [be it PCs, mobile...] will ping the service to check on potential malware or threats”, explained Maddison.

Trend’s cloud offering dubbed the “Smart Protection Network” is currently in beta testing and requires to download on a computer a very light weight software client that will then in turn call the company’s on-line service every time there’s a change on the computer.

“This client is one-tenth the size of a traditional antivirus software. Both the antivirus engine and the signatures are on-line versus running locally on the computer”, adds the Trend Micro executive.

So what would happen if the user is not connected to the Internet? Is s/he left at the mercy of hackers?

“Not at all. If our software can not connect to the Internet, so does the malware. But once it does, then our software will verify for any changes made on the computer, after using a USB key for example, and send it to the cloud.

When asked about competition, the Trend Micro executive points at a no man’s land. “McAfee and Trend are the only companies really focus on antivirus. And I don’t think McAfee is doing it”.