Dear F-Secure customers, shareholders, partners and employees,
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During 2007 approximately 166 million more people
worldwide joined the 1.1 billion of us already enjoying the opportunities of
Connected Life on the Internet. And what is very encouraging for
F-Secure is
the increasing amount of these new Internet citizens that protect their
experience by using Security as a
Service from the F-Secure partner community! As the role of Information
and Communication Technology (ICT) continues to become more central in life
and business, the importance of our work as the security experts and as
a trusted partner for Service Providers globally will continue to increase. This also implies
an increasing social responsibility of enabling safe and easy Internet experiences,
and for safeguarding continuity in terms of service access and connectedness.
It is an inspiring role for F-Secure Fellows to be serving on-line Internet users globally as we enable millions of customers to experience the Internet in a trusted manner. As Connected Life becomes a reality for more people (some estimate that 5 billion people will be connected by 2015, primarily through smartphones!) we can also foresee that the combination of information technology, value added services, and Internet security services continue to offer exciting service opportunities for our partners and ourselves. This opportunity to jointly innovate new services and to have an increasingly relevant role in serving society strongly motivates us to strive for new heights as a workplace and as a company.
On-line wellbeing spurs growth of on-line services
As our lives become connected through ICT the
protection of our digital devices and the quality of the service experience
become aspects of our wellbeing. This is what we call on-line wellbeing, and it
is the approach that F-Secure has adopted for planning its future. Increasing
the level of on-line wellbeing for Internet users will be an effective way to
encourage higher adoption rates for new value added services.
Availability of on-line services is nothing new to the global Internet community. What is changing is the innovation of new tailored services for specific customer segments. With the natural evolution of Internet related services, the industry is recognizing that the requirements for a great on-line experience differ between unique customer segments. By nature, as the Internet offers an expanded set of opportunities, we will see a clear segmentation of needs between technically advanced users on one hand, and on the other hand the bulk of Internet users where ease of use and support is valued the most.
A clearer focus on unique customer segment based needs also supports the objective of mass adoption of new technologies and services. Initially we experience a narrow market penetration of new technologies while the mass market waits for the “hassle free” experience and the availability of more personalized services. This is the stage we are currently at within the Internet related services industry. Antivirus and Internet security products were initially deployed by the technically advanced users, while the non-technical users may have had a product on their PCs which the security updates were 30 days old – and thus offering no real protection. Today the most popular way of staying protected is to subscribe to a security service from the Internet Service Provider, who already has the interest and tools to support their customers in achieving on-line wellbeing. In the future we can expect to see an expanded set of services to augment the total user experience, thus enabling people to do more with their Connected Lives.
As innovation makes new services available, and as new types of digital devices proliferate, there will be a natural demand for services that enable a trusted and easy experience. This is the area where you will see F-Secure continue to play an active role as we innovate new tools, technologies and related services with our Service Provider partners, with one ultimate goal in mind – a great customer experience for the global on-line community. To achieve wellbeing in our Connected Lives we will have a continuing need for up to date protection against the latest Internet threats – whether we access it through fixed or mobile networks.
Internet threats: a storm beneath the calm surface
The motivation for Internet criminality today is money, not publicity.
These illegal activities use techniques like trojans and bot software to
distribute spam and phishing attacks, but are quite successful in staying
invisible to the infected users. The invisibility of the attacks has made the
topic relatively uninteresting for the media, and consequently the public
perception is that the malware front is fairly quiet today.
This is far from the truth. During 2007 alone the amount of malware doubled and reached the level of half a million at the end of the year. This illustrates how the criminals have been able to ramp up their innovative capacity, and have produced as much malware in one year as was produced over the previous 20 years in total.
One widely visible attack during 2007 was the “Storm Worm” — Storm being the umbrella name for a collection of backdoor trojans and e-mail worms. They used sensationalized versions of real news headlines as a template, and this proved to be a very clever bit of social engineering. Storm initially penetrated millions of PCs around the world, accumulating massive computer power and gaining significant media attention. From a technical perspective this attack is another example of the innovation capabilities of Internet criminals. It was the first totally distributed botnet with no centralized control points, making it very difficult to take down. This botnet also had the capability to actively defend itself against virus researchers through launching a distributed denial of service attack against investigators’ computers.
The threat level for mobile phones remained low during 2007. One new phenomenon was the increasing availability of spying software. While the design, sales and purchase of such software is quite legal per se, it is very difficult to find any legal use of such software. The typical uses of these products include the surveillance of individuals’ spouses with features like remote listening of the phone and remote downloading of messages and contact lists.
Moving forward, new Security as a Service related innovations and
technologies continue to be high on the agenda for security companies. This is
the only way to protect Internet users from the dangers of the on-line world.
Serving customers globally with 166 Service Provider Partners
The threat scenario is becoming more complex and consequently it is
getting harder for both consumers and small or medium sized businesses to
maintain the necessary expertise and updated technology that an effective
protection level requires. A good way to address this problem is to acquire
security as a service from a Service Provider.
During the past year we have been fortunate to expand to 166 Service Provider
(SP) partnerships, with a total potential of more than 50 million broadband
customers to serve. With such a large addressable market we can also see a
strong demand for new services and thus great opportunities to innovate such
services, creating new and interesting business opportunities for our combined
ecosystem. With the new access methods (e.g. Wi-Fi) and a constantly increasing
multitude of digital devices the simplicity of the user experience and the
reliability of support will become ever more important. We share a common
interest with our SP partners for service innovation, revenue increase, and
churn reduction, and over time we will see an unparalleled portfolio of services
offered to simplify the Internet experience for both consumers and business
customers.
This is the world where F-Secure is at its best. We have
been the pioneer in Security as a Service – being one of the very first
companies to prove the business logic of delivering high quality and scalable
software services over the Internet. The Security as a Service concept will
likely expand to other software and service areas in the future. The best
starting point for expansion is to utilize the significant experience and
knowledge we already have, listen to our customers and partners – and be very
open for future innovation.
F-Secure celebrates its 20th Anniversary in 2008
Our company was founded in 1988 and we will celebrate our 20 year
anniversary in May this year. During these 20 years we have grown from a company
servicing x86 PCs to the approximately 100mÄ company we are today, with global
presence and a unique recognized competency profile. We see our future business
landscape as more dynamic than ever.
With this 20 year history we are proud to continue our passionate pursuit of
customer satisfaction and business expansion. For the F-Secure Fellows, we
continue to foster our core value of RELIABILITY at the center of our value set.
With this value commitment, and encouraged by our achievements so far, we also
expect to further set the standards for high quality, reliable software services
and an unparalleled focus on customer satisfaction.
On-line wellbeing with passion
We all can anticipate rapid innovation in the global market – and it is
also up to us to take advantage of these opportunities. Today, our global reach
is greater than ever, so we have entered the year 2008 with healthy and high
ambitions to be at the forefront of new service innovation. With our passion for
innovation and growth we are expecting a very inspiring and exciting future!
Sincerely,
Kimmo Alkio
