Quick Heal SMB Security Arrives in the U.S.

Quick, name a computer security software company.

Quick Heal may not be the first company that springs to mind when the topic of computer security comes up, but outside of the United States, it’s already made a name for itself. Today, the Indian software maker launched its North American operations (the U.S. and Canada) along with Seqrite, the company’s security toolset for small and midsized businesses (SMBs).

Admittedly, Quick Heal enters a crowded field with heavyweights like Symantec and McAfee (now a part of Intel Security), but Farokh Karani, director of North American Sales for Quick Heal, said what his company lacks in name recognition in these parts, it makes up for with a long history of securing PCs and devices in several parts of the globe.

A Long History of Small Business Security

Quick Heal is “more than 20 years old with more than 17 million endpoints covered,” Karani told Small Business Computing.  Those endpoints are currently spread across Quick Heal’s native India and regions beyond, totaling 100 countries and nearly 10 million customers. Now, the company takes aim at the small business data security needs in the U.S.

In a written statement, Quick Heal CEO and co-founder Kailash Katkar said that the move “marks a tremendous milestone for our company and represents a big turning point for the state of data security in the SME [small and midsized enterprise] market in North America. We’re confident that our deep, global expertise in addressing the data security needs of SMEs across South Asia, the Middle East, Japan and beyond will serve our customers well in North America.”

Sacrifice-Nothing Security

Seqrite, a solution that protects PCs, servers and mobile devices, is central to Quick Heal’s approach to fulfilling small business security requirements.

“In analyzing the market, we observed that existing SME alternatives don’t effectively cover the entire SME network infrastructure, including end-point, gateway and mobile, while others lack all the features that SMEs need for complete protection,” stated Katkar. The company’s answer is an integrated, cloud-enabled security platform that blends big business data and device protections with the consumer-like ease of use.

Describing Seqrite as “extremely full featured,” Karani, a former executive for antivirus software maker Kaspersky, said the product offers “enterprise-level anti-spam and USB monitoring and management, all built into the endpoint.” The product has mobile workers covered, with “support for roaming clients, inside or outside your network,” he added.

Seqrite’s modular product line is intended for environments ranging from 5 to 5,000 users. Its capabilities may be comprehensive and multi-tiered, noted Karani, but they are also stripped of the complexity and management overhead that can bedevil small business owners struggling to balance the demands on their time.

“Seqrite is designed so that you don’t have to have an IT background to manage this,” said Karani. A cloud-based dashboard displays a user-friendly set of controls to manage endpoints wherever they roam. In addition to warding off malware and destructive code, Quick Heal’s technology allows businesses to layer protection according to their IT environments and devices therein.

For example, Seqrite Endpoint Security (EPS) provides an integrated firewall, sandboxed browser protection, anti-spam, phishing detection, asset management and file activity monitoring capabilities. A one-year Seqrite EPS 6.0 license costs approximately $120 for 5 people.

Meanwhile, businesses can also deploy the cloud-based Seqrite Mobile Device Management (MDM) product to provide browsing protection, anti-theft and geolocation tracking services. For high-security environments, the company also offers the Terminator; a unified threat-management appliance that scans for malware at the network gateway level and keeps hackers at bay with intrusion detection and distributed denial of service (DDoS) protection.

Quick Heal Seqrite is available now through the company’s channel partners. Why not sell direct? As his company makes inroad into the North American market, the company is banking on small business technology pros. “Most SMBs turn to a channel partner as a trusted advisor,” Karani said.

Pedro Hernandez is a contributing editor at Small Business Computing. Follow him on Twitter @ecoINSITE.