AVG: Hacktivism is slowing down business

...banks don't necessarily reimburse. There was a lawsuit recently where a small business in US lost $300,000 (£190,000). The court found they were not properly protected, so the banks did not have to reimburse.

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CESG: How UK defends against cyberattacks

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Cyberattacks seem to be moving up the political agenda. Do you think governments are ahead of the curve, or are they playing catch-up?
Governments are starting to pay more attention to security. We are working with both the European Commission and the US government. We went to Capitol Hill with their top guys to talk about how to protect government websites and incentivise people to use security software.

Seventy percent of people [in the US] file their tax returns online. If they get hacked, it takes 30 seconds to ship that data out. Our position is, you don't want to tell people you need this, this, and this — governments should never govern what good security means. I don't think the government should control or dictate a level of security. I don't see the government as a regulatory body for what users should do about security, and how they do it.

What do you think of the state of international efforts in information security?
There are a lot of cyber-initiatives going on, but it's tough to get it together. There's competition between some countries to get hold of confidential data. It is truly a new form of warfare.

There are lots of Western complaints about cyber-espionage by China, but the US and the UK also have cyber-capabilities. Do you think this is two-way traffic?
I hate to think of the government of the US or the UK engaging in that kind of action. I hate to think they would try to thwart innovation to protect their own interest.

AVG has its own mobile security products, and works with both Apple and Google to create them. Which operating system is more challenging to write security products for?
Proprietary phone platforms are by nature a closed system, Google is open. To interface with Mac OS and iOS is really hard. You have to work with Apple to do that. They are so locked down, they are a lot tougher to protect.

In terms of the nature of Android, it's easier to integrate the technologies because it's open source, but the nature of open source is that it is a little tougher to stay on top of, because a lot of code can be introduced.

There's more malware on open source [mobile platforms], so there's more need to keep it updated, but it's harder to protect closed source. We struggle to make a good security Mac product. Apple locks it down for security reasons, and because it wants to control the ecosystem.