Governance & Risk Management , Incident & Breach Response , Managed Detection & Response (MDR)

Proactive Malware Hunting

Marcin Kleczynski of Malwarebytes on Why 'Is Antivirus Dead?' is Moot
Proactive Malware Hunting

If malware infections and data breaches are inevitable, then why should organizations even try to be proactive? Isn't a reactive stance more appropriate? Not so, says Marcin Kleczynski, CEO of Malwarebytes.

"Just being reactive gives the attackers many opportunities to steal data from your environment," says Kleczynski, who also is the founder of Malwarebytes. "If you are at least somewhat proactive, you can mitigate a lot of the damage that some of these low-hanging-fruit threats can do to you."

A lot of critics - and even some security vendors - have taken to claiming "Antivirus is dead." But Kleczynski won't go quite that far.

"This is a controversial topic for me because I actually don't think 'antivirus is dead' is the right thing to be talking about," he says. "It's really: 'What kind of solutions do you need on the endpoint?' Whether it's next-generation or it's called antivirus, I don't think the typical organization cares. In the end, I think an IT administrator looking to deploy something in their environment needs to look at efficacy and efficacy alone."

In an interview about proactive malware detection, Kleczynski discusses:

  • Why it's not enough to react to malware;
  • The evolution of endpoint malware detection;
  • Why risks of the Internet of Things are overhyped.

Kleczynski is the CEO and founder of Malwarebytes. He wrote the first piece of software for Malwarebytes in 2004 and launched the company four years later. Malwarebytes products have been downloaded over 500 million times and have removed over five billion pieces of malware. Today, Marcin leads more than 250 employees in 14 countries, overseeing the strategic expansion of the business, as well as the long-term vision for the research and development teams. Marcin is recognized as one of the leading authorities on cybersecurity and is a regular speaker at conferences around the world. In 2011, he earned his pilot's license and trains regularly to bolster his flight skills. He earned a degree in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign, received the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2014, and was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30.




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