Think of some of the things that didn’t exist in 1999:
The iPad
Snapchat
iPhone
Facebook
Youtube
Instagram
Uber
Android
Slack
The Xbox
Amazon Echo
Wi-Fi Hotspots
Skype
Nest
In 1999, almost two billion people alive now weren’t born yet and the term Internet of Things had just been invented. If you wanted to get online, you had to use a modem that used a phone line. Viruses were mainly passed on through floppy disks, hackers hadn’t yet figured out had to monetize malware and your biggest security concerns were shoulder surfers and protecting a few passwords.
In 1999, AV-TEST reported that there were 98,428 total unique malware samples. Today, AV-TEST registers over 350,000 new pieces of malware and potentially unwanted applications every day.
Back then security was relatively simple. If your computer connected to the internet, you may have been running antivirus. F-Secure released its first AV product at the beginning of the 90s, but we were just protecting your computer from basic threats that would cost you far more time than money.
Now, we are in the middle of the second digital revolution of our lifetime. Connecting every computer to the internet was the first. Now everything else is getting connected.
“Twenty years ago, you didn’t spend hours a week surfing the web through your phone. There was no free public Wi-Fi, no massive data breaches, no smart washing machines, no ‘smart’ anything,” says Sean Sullivan, Security Advisor at F-Secure. “This is the era old-school antivirus comes from. Back then, you just had to protect your PC from threats that mostly cost you time, not money. Now, almost everything goes online, cyber crime is big business, and everything that goes online needs to be protected.”
Last year, F-Secure merged SAFE and FREEDOME VPN – which enables customers to encrypt communications over Wi-Fi, use virtual locations, and surf the web without being tracked – to create the award-winning internet security solution TOTAL.
But customers kept asking us why they couldn’t get the other premium cyber security solutions we offer all under one subscription. We listened and now with TOTAL everything that’s connected can be protected. Your subscription now includes the features of F-Secure KEY and an F-Secure SENSE security subscription to protect all the smart devices in their home with the SENSE device, which is sold separately.
You know about the deluge of malware you face every time you go online and snooping that can happen over unsecured Wi-Fi network. Endless data breaches have made it clear that if you aren’t using strong unique passwords, your private data is in danger no matter how much security you use. And both Interpol and the FBI issued warnings in 2018 that say the time to start protecting IoT devices in your home is now.
There are so many more ways to use and enjoy the internet now than there were in the last millennium. But there are also increasingly complex threats being engineered by organized crime and nation states to overcome the flaws in our cyber security.
That’s why we updated TOTAL to give you all the benefits of going online in 2018 with the security you felt in the last century, if you were even around then.
Here’s another thing you didn’t see very much of in 1999 — an infographic:
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