Security suites: Innovation is never far behind

I am an avid follower of security suites, because i think it's an innovative concept of bringing all security features under one umbrella. But remember that there are leaders in each of those segments – like Zonealarm in Personal Firewall, Kaspersky in malware & anti-virus, Webroot in anti-spyware, CA in anti-spam, Norton as a good silent firewall, Mcafee in wireless protection, etc. It's also good to see the Dr. Solomons transformed into companies like Network Associates & Symantec and now companies like Webroot, Kaspersky, Iolo, Checkpoint giving a tough run for Mcafee & Norton. But with competition comes innovation – and that's one thing i really like about competition.

One day someone thought of bringing all these security features together and 'security suites' were born. The birth of security suites did not however kill the internal competition. I thought the anti-virus warfare was atleast over with 'you are as safe as your signature updates'; until Kaspersky came in. Mcafee, Symantec, CA ; all did a good job at packing all security features together. With features comes in performance and that was amiss on most such products. That is beyond the point though, and i can talk about it some other time. Other companies saw the opportunities here and entered the fray. I am really impressed with Zonealarm with the way they brought in the concept of personal firewall to the common man's desktop. It was fast , it was effective , the concept was fresh and promised blocking dangers rather than handling them.

Mcafee, Norton and the other guys started adding stuff to their suites until they ran out of features to add. And again remember the competition-innovation connection. Then came the era of having add-on features like PC cleanup, start up program management, etc., in the suites. The demand for these grew with the issue of privacy coming in – 3^rd party cookies, Activex controls, etc. Now the line between privacy & security is not blurred anymore – they are one and the same.

As a result, we have System maintenance companies entering the security area – like Iolo and security companies entering the System maintenance area. And i must admit that both sets of companies have done a pretty decent job so far. This however has killed some of the erstwhile products like, Trend Micro Anti-spyware, Easy Remover, etc. which may be good for the companies to focus on their narrow portfolios.

And they have taken these steps due to competition and the good thing about competition is that it invites more competition. And then innovation is not far behind.