BitDefender Offers Challenge To Find Beta Bugs

Security company BitDefender on Tuesday issued a challenge to researchers and users (and hackers?) to try to find vulnerabilities in the beta of its upcoming client security product Total Security 2008.

The challenge starts just as the security software, which is designed to offer new security features for gamers, hits beta today. The contest and the first beta are set to run through July 20. At that point, the testers who have found and reported the most bugs to BitDefender will be in line for prizes, including a Sony Playstation 3, a Microsoft Xbox360, and a Nintendo Wii.

Contest winners will be announced on Aug. 30. Users can download the beta at this Web site.

Two years ago, the same company set up a crash test challenge for what was then its new antivirus product for Linux e-mail servers. The prize that time: 1,000 German beers and a trip to BitDefender's home base in Romania, where the winning tester got to visit Count Dracula's castle.

The Total Security 2008 software is a new product. A spokesman for BitDefender said in an interview that the company has taken several of its products, including antivirus and anti-spam technologies, and put them all together in a more comprehensive package, which also includes a firewall and anti-spyware features. Total Security is designed to have integrated backup and PC maintenance features.

BitDefender is also taking aim at the gaming market, adding a new game mode, which is a security configuration geared to be less intrusive for game playing.

"A lot of gamers don't use any kind of security software because it slows down the PC," said the spokesman. "This scales down the firewall, the real-time spyware detection, and the antivirus so instead of scanning all the files, it only scans the ones most likely to have a virus, like .exe file extensions."

BitDefender mainly serves the consumer market at this point with 80% of its sales coming from individual users. Its corporate users, according to the spokesman, largely are small to midsize businesses. But in the fourth quarter of this year, the company is expected to reach further into the corporate market with its upcoming Enterprise Client and Enterprise Manager products.