Expect Us.
Activist hacker collective, Anonymous has gone orbital in their coordinated attack on Russian Government websites and platform services, knocking many of them offline.
They are also hitting the commercial sector hard in countries where organisations supporting Vladimir Putin’s regime are being exposed with leaks of information like emails, employee names and key businesses relationships, now occurring in real-time.
The cyber war is just beginning.
With my day job at Inhabit responsible for running a complex, multi country, multi lingual network of computers, servers and platforms, it got me thinking about some of the security services and software potentially being employed.
Specifically security software and its country of origin and/or base of operations.
Is this something that should even be considered?
Could a commercial entity in a nation state on a war footing be compromised?
Could the commercial reputation and quality be overtaken by nation state nationalistic fervor, legal directive or coercion?
Questions to ponder.
Below is a snapshot of the major cyber security vendors out there. Really diverse!
Vendor | Country of Origin | Website | Founded | HQ | Employees (Year) |
Avast (formerly AVG Technologies) | Czech Republic | https://www.avast.com | 1998 | Prague, Czech Republic | 1700 (2021) |
BitDefender | Romania | https://www.bitdefender.com | 2001 | Bucharest, Romania | 1,600 (2019) |
Broadcom (formerly Symantec) | United States | https://www.broadcom.com | 1982 | Tempe, Arizona, USA | 3,659 (2020) |
Carbon Black | United States | https://www.carbonblack.com | 2002 | Waltham, Massachusetts, USA | 1,000 (2019) |
CheckPoint | Israel | https://www.checkpoint.com | 1993 | Tel Aviv, Israel | 5,200 (2020) |
Cisco | United States | https://www.cisco.com | 1984 | San Jose, California, USA | 79,500 (2021) |
Comodo | United Kingdom | https://www.comodo.com | 1998 | Bloomfield, New Jersey, USA | 1,200 |
Darktrace | United Kingdom | https://www.darktrace.com | 2013 | Cambridge, UK | 1,200 (2021) |
ESET | Czechoslovakia | https://www.eset.com | 1992 | Bratislava, Slovakia | 1,684 (2019) |
Fortinet | United States | https://www.fortinet.com | 2000 | Sunnyvale, California, USA | 9,700 (2020) |
F-Secure | Finland | https://www.f-secure.com | 1988 | Helsinki, Finland | 1,678 (2020) |
Juniper | United States | https://www.juniper.net | 1996 | Sunnyvale, California, USA | 9,400 (2019) |
Kaspersky | Russia | https://www.kaspersky.com | 1997 | Moscow, Russia | 4,000 (2020) |
Malwarebytes | Poland | https://www.malwarebytes.com | 2008 | Santa Clara, California, USA | 800 (2017) |
McAfee | United States | https://www.mcafee.com | 1987 | San Jose, California, USA | 6,900 (2020) |
Mimecast | United Kingdom | https://www.mimecast.com | 2003 | London, UK | 1,736 (2021) |
Palo Alto Networks | United States | https://www.paloaltonetworks.com | 2005 | Santa Clara, California, USA | 11,098 (2021) |
Panda | Spain | https://www.pandasecurity.com | 1990 | Madrid, Spain | 500 |
Proofpoint | United States | https://www.proofpoint.com | 2003 | Sunnyvale, California, USA | 3,368 (2019) |
Sophos | United Kingdom | https://www.sophos.com | 1985 | Abingdon, UK | 3,600 (2021) |
Threatlocker | United States | https://www.threatlocker.com | 2017 | Maitland, Florida, USA | 111 (2021) |
Trend Micro | United States | https://www.trendmicro.com | 1988 | Irving, Texas, USA | 6,975 (2020) |
Trustwave | United States | https://www.trustwave.com | 1995 | Chicago, Illinois, USA | 1,600 |