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An edited transcript of the interview with Melih Abdulhayoglu's follows. (To hearthe full interview, pleasehttp://archives.warprad io.com/btr/ComputerAmerica/031 922.MP3 . The broadcast airedon March 19, 2007 at 7:00 PM PST. The host was Carey Holzman (CH), is the author ofa number of publications including The Healthy PC).
CH: Our guest tonight is the Chief Security Architect and CEO of Comodo, MelihAbdulhayoglu. They are the makers of a free firewall.
CH: You have an interesting product, can you tell us about it?
MA: Thank you. Sure. We thought, "Why not build one of the best firewalls around andgive it away for free?". And [then] we went ahead and did that.
CH: I like that thought, but while there are lots of good firewalls, the problem isthat people don't know how to use them. They don't know if an application wants toaccess the internet, whether they should allow it or not. So they end up clicking"No" and ultimately locking themselves out of their computer, or they "allow all"which defeats the whole point of having a firewall. Melih, could you tell me howComodo is different from other firewalls, paid or free?
MA: Sure. When the firewall is asking this question, it is checking to see what sortof executable application is running on your computer trying to make a connection tothe Internet. The reason it is asking is because it does not know what that specificapplication is about. So we thought, "Why not create a huge safe list with a safelist of applications so that your firewall will ask you less often?"
CH: Yes, that's mind blowing. Usually 90% of us use regular programs, yet firewallsforce people to allow access each and every time one of these people tries to accessthat program. How many applications do you have in your safe lists that are known tobe safe?
MA: We have around 300,000 applications at the moment.
CH: Wow, 300, 000!
MA: And we are getting 3,000 executables a day to review. On daily basis, we keepupdating our lists.
CH: And what about some hacker putting something in your safe list?
MA: That's where being the world's 2nd largest Certification Authority comes in. Weare the guys who put the padlock on websites, so we have full Public KeyInfrastructure. What that means is we have the ability to digitally sign a file sothat any modification to it can be protected. If any modification is made, ourfirewall will know about it and it would reject it.
CH: Is your firewall fast and light-weight or is it going to strain my systemresources?
MA: A firewall is all about controlling and stopping malware from making aconnection from your home to the Internet. So, how do you test firewall security?This is known as the "leak test". What you do is see is if your firewall is leakingor not. According to independent tests, in terms of having best scoring leak test,we scored top of the list. And we do it in a way whereby it don't take too muchsystem resources.
CH: OK but I could be sending data right now and just not know it
MA: That is one of the biggest problems facing us today. I mean, look at spam. 80%of it comes from Zombie computers that have not been protected. Somehow we are goingto have to protect all of those machines or else the army of Zombie PCs will deterall of us from using the Internet.
CH: That's true.
CH: Is there any plan of selling or charging for this firewall or other desktopsecurity products?
MA: No, anything in desktop security that we are going to give to consumers is free.
CH: God bless you. So how do you get paid?
MA: Very good question, actually. Let me explain. First of all, why free? Someonehas to provide it for free since the problems we are facing today from spam to spyware are all because we don't have our machines secured. Many people around theworld cannot afford $60 or $70 in countries such as China where the average incomeis about 100$ a month. So what happens is that all of those machines are leftvulnerable, and China has the second largest Internet population in the world.
So spam, spyware, and hacking often come from these machines. To solve this problem,we need to create the idea of a secure and trusted Internet. Once we have done that,we need to come up with a business model that allows us to make money from that.
By giving free products to end-users, we are creating a secure ecosystem for ourusers and our online businesses. In return, businesses pay Comodo to protect theirwebsites. So, the more users we have using our firewall, the more trusted the Comodobrand is, and the more business customers will choose Comodo to secure their onlineenvironment. Our customers are happy because they are using our services to protecttheir websites and consumers are happy because they can do business onlineconfidently.
CH: That sounds like a good plan. When it comes to AV or firewall, I am a bigbeliever in paying money in exchange to getting something back. But with manysolutions, you pay to not get anything.
MA: That's a very important point. Imagine that there is a burglar alarm that onlyrecognizes certain burglars but not all burglars. That's the current flawed modelfor anti-virus solutions. You can no longer use what is known as black listingtechnologies and only stop known malware.
Let's look it in this way. In the physical world, there is a door. The door is your'prevention'. Also, you have a burglar alarm. The burglar alarm is your 'detection'.Thirdly, you have insurance. Insurance is your 'cure'. In a security system, youneed all three. You need prevention, detection and cure. In today's securitysolutions, there is no 'prevention' - only 'detection' technologies such as AV andfirewall. For example, in our next version of firewall, is going to have what isknown as HIPS to include prevention technologies. What HIPS does is, instead ofsetting the default to be "allow", we are changing it so the default is "deny".
CH: Companies like McAfee seem like they have lost the way. They put in lots ofprocesses, features, and packaging and ended up with product that was heavy. Theygive you big boxes and charge $20 or $30 more. What makes Comodo different?
MA: Well, first of all, we have the luxury of not charging people, so we don't haveto justify the price by including lots stuff that people don't need. You know,adding features for more and more functionality makes the product not feasible.
CH: That's good to hear, and that's promising in the future. I note that on yourwebsite "free" means "free for your firewall, antivirus, email security certificatefree and password manager free". Tell me about those.
MA: We believe everyone should be offered free desktop security because it's ineveryone's interest to create a more secure and trusted Internet. We are the guysthat let you encrypt and digitally sign your email for free. We have products likepassword manager, backup product, and also a very innovative tool calledVerification Engine. This solves the problem of not knowing whether graphics on asite, like a credit card logo, are authentic. We have the only technology in theworld to verify the web content with VerificationEngine. So, with thesetechnologies, we are going to create a trusted Internet for everyone.
CH: Anything you want to mention in our last few moments?
MA: All we want to gain is our users' trust. As users trust Comodo, they will trustwebsites protected by Comodo and more business will trust our solutions. That is howwe want to Create Trust Online.
CH: So everybody who sees or hears this show, get a free copy of the firewall. Ifyou install it, give us your feedback. Thank you.
About Comodo
With over 1,000,000 customers worldwide, Comodo, through its family of companies, isa leading Certification Authority and global provider of Identity and TrustAssurance services on the Internet. Comodo offers businesses and consumers theintelligent security, authentication and assurance services necessary to ensuretrust in online transactions.
With global offices in the US, UK, Ukraine and India, Comodo helps enterprisesaddress digital ecommerce and infrastructure needs with reliable, third generationsolutions that improve customer relationships, enhance customer trust and createefficiencies across digital ecommerce operations. Comodo's solutions includeintegrated Web hosting management solutions, infrastructure services, digitale-commerce services, digital certification, identity assurance, customer privacy andvulnerability management solutions. For additional information on Comodo - CreatingTrust Online - please visit: www.comodo.com
