As threats proliferate, and malware attacks everything, Aladdin's product protects users not just from the usual suspects, but also from holes in their own Microsoft computers.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [October 19, 2006]

You may remember Petach Tikva, Israel-based Aladdin Knowledge Systems as a maker of useful consumer applications in the 1980s and 1990s. Founded in 1985, the company now focuses on enterprise-class applications, but is touting a program to offer that enterprise-class security to consumers through its ISP offering, eSafe SecureSurfing solution for ISPs.

"We believe home businesses and small businesses will eventually buy their security from ISPs," explains Shimon Gruper, vice president of technologies for the Aladdin eSafe Business Unit.

But Aladdin doesn't expect to be able to find every customer in the world by itself, so it's built a platform that allows ISPs to sell its project to SMB customers. So far, a revenue share model has had worldwide appeal, as ISPs from Thailand to Israel to Switzerland signed up for the program, but the same strategy won't work in the U.S., says Gruper.

"In the U.S., ISPs do not believe in charging for services. Instead, they put services into a bundle as part of the basic offering."

If you're an ISP, Gruper says, you want to roll out a new service on part of your network instead of rolling it out to everyone at once. Then you want to grow at a reasonable pace. Charging for the service allows you to do all of this. It slows adoption, and that's not bad.

In Israel, one ISP, Internet Gold, has a take rate of 50 percent before the end of the first year, claims Gruper.

Companies, he says, charge between $1.50 per month (Thailand) and $3 per month (Switzerland), as the local market permits.

The product
Aladdin's product is its own, and combines anti-spam, anti-virus, and anti-spyware with a few special features.

Gruper is proudest of a technology called Xploit Stopper, a feature that's been around for several years but is, he says, increasingly relevant. "In 2002, we realized that security holes in Microsoft applications would, unfortunately, become the main conduit for the problems of the future and unfortunately, we were right," he says.

Aladdin gets known Microsoft holes in advance of the general population and blocks the holes. He says the prevention is more like a firewall rule than a virus signature. Therefore, it works even when Aladdin doesn't know the specific code being used to exploit the hole. "For example, just a few days ago, we dealt with an HTML vulnerability we thought was just a proof of concept. But then we learned that [a notorious site that gives out stolen software serial numbers] was using it to infect computers with spyware. If you're not patched, and you go there, you will be infected immediately."

In general, Gruper is proud of Aladdin's research. He feels the company would be more famous if not for a trick of nomenclature. The company had predicted a particular kind of malware that, they felt, the world was not prepared for. "When we changed the term from 'vandals' to 'spyware' people understood what we were talking about."

Asked to summarize how his company's product compares with the competition, Gruper has a quick answer. "It's about performance and speed. At the same level of security, other products do not scale. Trend Micro, BlueCoat, these products are proxy solutions and ISPs hate proxies because they will never scale. Our competitors can provide for smaller customers, but cannot scale to a hundred thousand or a million."

So what's the smallest ISP that should consider eSafe? "It starts to be interesting when an ISP has 30, 40 thousand subscribers or more."

Pricing and availability
The eSafe SecureSurfing solution for ISPs is available now. Although a flat price program is available, Gruper says ISPs should prefer the revenue share. "We provide everything, including the hardware. There's zero investment for the ISP. The ISP markets the service and does the billing, and we split the revenue. It's pure income for the ISP."

Aladdin will be present again at ISPCON in Santa Clara, November 7 through 9. Jupitermedia, the parent company of this site, is a co-producer of ISPCON.

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