Agnitum Ltd. was founded in 1999 in St. Petersburg , Russia as a software company. In 2000 Agnitum hired 2 developers and increased the number of staff to 20 until 2002. Agnitum was originally focused on anti-trojan and PC connections monitoring solutions targeted on Windows PCs users. The company is known as a personal firewall and Internet securityproducts provider. Outpost Firewall Pro , the flagship product of the company, was released in 2002 together with its freewaresolution (updated once in 2009). Agnitum’s products are mostly consumer-oriented, taking into account licensing Agnitum’s products technologies to several national security software publishers.
On January 14, 2016, Agnitum confirmed on its official blog that the company was acquired by Yandex in December 2015. [2] On February 28, 2017, as the final phase of the sale to Yandex, the Agnitum site and its user forum was shut down.
History
Agnitum was established as a software producer in 1999 in St. Petersburg, Russia by Baltic State Technical University .
Distributing own software as shareware , Agnitum has sold their niche software. After entering in 2002 to the PC’s Agnitum software has become rather popular.
In 2002 Agnitum began to implement an international distribution strategy, putting in place agreements with partners for the major European markets as well as Germany, Italy, Spain and Poland. Between 2003 and 2006 Agnitum strengthened its European, American and Far East market positions.
The personal firewall engine of the company has become integrated into several other firms’ security solutions. Partnering with IT security vendors to provide the personal firewall and anti-spyware technologies, in 2003-2006 Agnitum has announced contracts with anti-virus solutions vendors (as a whole re-branded software or part of the vendor’s suite): Sophos (UK, USA ), Lavasoft (Sweden), Novell (USA), VirusBuster (Hungary) and others.
In 2006 Agnitum had criticized Microsoft’s OneCare Firewall – Agnitum claimed it leaks when it’s all over the world. Agnitum’s Chief Software Architect posted its less-than-glowing assessment of Microsoft’s Windows Firewall, part of the company’s entry into the security software business.
in 2006 Agnitum has entered a strategic alliance with VirusBuster , [3] experienced anti-virus vendor from Hungary . Agnitum has gotten to the market of Internet Security Suite solutions to compete with anti-virus vendors ( Kaspersky, ZoneLabs , etc.) who have had their personal firewall in their personal security solutions adware, spam and web content filtering engines).
In 2007-2008 Agnitum finally entered the market of anti-virus solutions. Its anti-virus products have been tested and tested by the Viruses ‘ VB100 and Anti-Malware.ru’s anti-virus tests, and the Outpost Firewall’s have been tested by the leaktests and killtests at the independent research portals.
In 2009 and 2010 Agnitum released two freeware editions for ict software Outpost – Outpost Firewall Pro (Free edition) and Outpost Security Suite Free to continuous competition with well-known ZoneAlarm , Comodo and other free PC firewall vendors.
Product History
Agnitum’s first software products were anti-trojan tool Tauscan [4] and PC connections monitoring tool Jammer.
Anti-trojan software , Tauscan, has just gotten attention paid by the media and received some awards. [5] Jammer was focused on detecting and blocking attacks from hackers; So it was a prototype for the Personal Firewall Outpost, launched simultaneously in “Free” and “Pro” versions in March 2002.
In March 2007 Agnitum released free anti-spam plug-in for Microsoft Outlook filtering and Outlook Express mail (supports The Bat! Since 2008).
In May 2007 Agnitum released combined Internet Security suite solution – Outpost Security Suite Pro (OSSP). It was a proactive solution on the basis of Outpost Firewall, Agnitum Anti-Spam and licensed Anti-Virus combined with Agnitum’s Anti-Spyware.
In October 2007 Agnitum released Microsoft Vista-compatible Outpost “2008” products. Outpost Firewall Pro has been tested and tested by Matousec Transparent Security Firewall.
In 2010 Agnitum released for freeware solution – Outpost Security Suite Free to include anti-virus, anti-spyware and anti-spam as free Internet Security suite.
At the moment, Agnitum’s security products are available in the following languages: English, German, French, Spanish and Russian (by default). There are also lots of localized versions of Italian, Polish, Hungarian, Japanese, Traditional and Simplified Chinese, Korean, Turkish, Dutch and Brazilian Portuguese.
Technology licenses
Agnitum’s firewall, anti-spyware and anti-virus engines became almost independent products. Several IT security companies have been licensing Agnitum’s technologies, and integrating it into their own products. – Novell OS Client Security Agent – Sophos (for Corporate Edition Client Agent) – Bullguard (for Internet Security Solution) – Lavasoft (for personal firewall client client) – CAT / QuickHeal (Indian anti-virus vendor solutions, for Total Security solution)
References
- Jump up^ [1]
- Jump up^ Yandex Acquired Agnitum technology for Yandex Browser
- Jump up^ see VirusBuster OEM partners ArchivedSeptember 30, 2009, at theWayback Machine.
- Jump up^ see[2]as an example of notability
- Jump up^ see Editor’s Choice Awards in PCMag Review of Anti-trojan tools for 2002 “Archived copy” . Archived from the original on 2016-03-03 . Retrieved 2009-09-13 .