A Canadian, Web-enabled call center services company with 500 workers reportedly is hailing a Claremont, North Carolina-based distributor of AVG Technologies that it turned to for a computer security solution that includes 300 licenses of an anti-virus program.

 

Officials at London, Ontario-based Alliance iCommunications say they turned to Walling Data because it’s the only seller that offered its customers free, unlimited pre- and post-sales support within the United States.

 

According to Derek Lightfoot, Alliance’s IT manager, buying from Walling Data was easy.

 

“Their pricing was super-competitive,” company officials say. “In fact, purchasing AVG Anti-Virus through Walling saved us 35 percent over our previous virus protection bill, so that made the management team happy.”

 

At least as importantly, the company appears poised to fend off potential cyber attacks – a priority for companies now as hackers’ attacks grow more targeted and sophisticated.

 

As TMCnet reported, cyber-criminals – men and woman who use computers to do things like make bogus offers or steal information, money and identities – are becoming more and more sophisticated and are developing increasingly specialized attacks, a panel of experts from the world’s largest maker of networking gear said this week.

 

Officials from Cisco Systems Inc. said during an IPTV (News - Alert) broadcast that people who use technology as a tool to drive their own illegal businesses are innovating in ways far more complex than the old e-mail viruses.

 

According to Patrick Peterson, a Cisco (News - Alert) fellow and chief security researcher, the criminals now are blending e-mail and the Web to attack specific entities, such as smaller credit unions and universities.

 

“The sophistication is mind-boggling,” Peterson said. “It’s impossible to imagine that criminal enterprises can do this kind of sophistication.”

 

Peterson was joined by David Goddard, Cisco’s vice president of security assurance, and Tom Gillis, its vice president of security product marketing, in an hour-long, free broadcast available here.

 

With botnets, phishing and spam attacks, cyber-criminals possess the technology to infiltrate Web sites and post their own content, though at other times, criminals are using legitimate means – such as popular e-mail sites from Yahoo!, Hotmail or Gmail – to hijack personal accounts. Once inside a user’s personal account, for example, the criminals may use contact lists to spread harmful hyperlinks that pull other people’s PCs into a network of infected computers.

 

Alliance’s IT team reportedly has no regrets about switching to AVG. Both the installation and the management of AVG were a breeze, according to Lightfoot.

 

“AVG has made security easier for us to manage with its granular user access controls,” he said. “A lot of other products have access controls but not as fine-tuned and customizable as AVG’s. Users cannot disable the real-time scanning or modify other anti-virus settings.”