Internet security should be like a utility, according to Risto Siilasmaa.
Complex security software that people need to buy in a store or online, then install and manage, should be replaced with a simple shield delivered nearly invisibly with an Internet access account, argues Siilasmaa, the chief executive of F-Secure.
The small Finnish security company — it recorded €61.8m in revenue last year — specialises in security as a service. In Europe, it leads the market and provides security software to just over a third of all broadband Internet users, Siilasmaa said. That's twice as many as Symantec, the runner-up and the world's largest antivirus company, he noted.
Another of F-Secure's hobby horses is mobile-phone security. The company was one of the first to sell security software for mobile handsets. That's not a coincidence: Nokia, the world's biggest mobile-phone maker, is also Finnish. But the threat to mobile phones may have been hyped a bit, Siilasmaa admits.
Q: People might know the F-Secure name, but they might not know who you are or what it is that you do.
A: F-Secure is an Internet security company, focused around transforming security from a product into a service and working with different types of service providers to significantly improve the convenience of using security.
A Harvard marketing professor said, 30 years ago, that people don't want to buy quarter-inch drills; they want to buy quarter-inch holes. We'd like to transform security from the drill that people have to learn to use, to [their] being able to purchase the hole that they need.
So you want to make security something people don't have to think about, but is just there?
Yes, like water or electricity. It just comes from the wall.
We also believe that people should not have to be educated about what they cannot do online. We believe that technology should give them the freedom to try to do whatever they want. [But also] the technology will prevent them from doing something or going somewhere they shouldn't go. That's convenience.
It's not convenient when you first have to figure out which product to buy, take it home, read the manual, install it and configure it. Then you buy a new game, and you have to reconfigure the firewall. It's not convenient, and security is becoming too important an issue for it to be inconvenient.
How can you change that?
Security should be a process. It is based on software and hardware, obviously. You have to install something on your PC and your servers, but that should be enough.
In corporate environments, you need to have a level of management and you need to be able to outsource that management responsibility to a team of people that can actually do a better job than you can.
For example, 24/7 support is not available even in many Fortune 1000 companies. People can be called; but they are asleep, they are groggy after waking up, they have to go to a PC and then they have to log on, and then they have to see what's happening. And they may not be the security experts — they're just IT experts.
How does F-Secure stand out from the crowd of security companies?
There are obvious technical merits to what we do. But on the convenience side, we'd like people not to have to go to the store. We would like their service providers — the companies that they work with and trust and…
