Speaker 1: New antivirus software that's taking a different approach.
Speaker 2: What's going on, imrich Demiro. This is rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: For years, antivirus software has worked in pretty much the
Speaker 1: same way. Companies find viruses and malware that identify their
Speaker 1: key characteristics, then they add them to their list of definitions.
Speaker 2: Antivirus software on your home.
Speaker 1: Computer gets that list of updated definitions, then it checks
Speaker 1: the files on your computer.
Speaker 2: Against those lists.
Speaker 1: The problem is, if an app hasn't seen a particular
Speaker 1: virus or malware, it could be pretty ineffective against it.
Speaker 1: Now a new company named Silance I've recently met with.
Speaker 1: They're taking a totally different approach. They are literally teaching
Speaker 1: their anti virus software to be smart. Thanks to artificial
Speaker 1: intelligence and machine learning, it can spot a bad file
Speaker 1: even if it's never.
Speaker 2: Seen it before. Yes, it is really cool.
Speaker 1: I went over to their headquarters in Irvine, California and
Speaker 1: talked to Christopher Bray. He is the head of their
Speaker 1: new consumer division.
Speaker 3: The threats have increased exponentially. Back in the early days,
Speaker 3: I think we all remember the Melissa viruses. In the
Speaker 3: early two thousands, we had a handful of new unknown
Speaker 3: malicious software released monthly. These days, We've got three hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty thousand pieces of malicious software being released daily,
Speaker 3: new malicious software, and it doesn't discriminate. It'll attack companies,
Speaker 3: it'll attack individuals. It's largely driven by financial motivations. It's
Speaker 3: crime driven. Back in the old days, people who used
Speaker 3: to write malicious software, we're kids who are looking for
Speaker 3: digital bragging rights. It was the equivalent of breaking a window.
Speaker 3: Today it's evolved to very, very sophisticated organizations that hire
Speaker 3: the best and brightest and write software that surreptitiously compromises
Speaker 3: your identity, steals your credentials, ransoms your system any way
Speaker 3: that they can get money out of you.
Speaker 1: Silence literally teaches their software, so they feed their all
Speaker 1: kinds of good and bad files so they can understand
Speaker 1: the differences between them.
Speaker 3: We take what we call a proactive approach, which means
Speaker 3: we don't need to rely on updates or getting actual
Speaker 3: copies of the malicious software to write a fix for it. Rather,
Speaker 3: we use the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning
Speaker 3: in order to identify good and bad software before it
Speaker 3: even has an opportunity to run.
Speaker 1: They gave me a demo of just how powerful their
Speaker 1: software can be. So we did the same scenario twice.
Speaker 1: First we clicked on an infected attachment on an unprotected
Speaker 1: computer and we saw ransomware take over the entire screen.
Speaker 1: Then we clicked on the same exact attachment on a
Speaker 1: computer that had the Silent software on it, and Silence
Speaker 1: literally stopped the ransomware before it had any opportunity to act.
Speaker 3: You know, a common attract vector is phishing emails. So
Speaker 3: you'll get an email from someone that you trust, maybe
Speaker 3: it's your bank, maybe it's a friend, and it's got
Speaker 3: an innocuous document that's attached to.
Speaker 4: It asks you to double click.
Speaker 3: You do that, and all of a sudden, you've just
Speaker 3: unleashed some sort of malicious.
Speaker 4: Software like ransomware.
Speaker 3: So if you're running a Silence entivirus, the minute you
Speaker 3: double click on that malicious attachment, it does a split
Speaker 3: second assessment is this good or is it bad? And
Speaker 3: if it's bad, it'll throw it into quarantine right away,
Speaker 3: preventing it from running it all.
Speaker 1: Now you might be thinking, can't any old antivirus software
Speaker 1: do this? Possibly, yes, But the difference here is that
Speaker 1: Silence can understand whether a file is good or bad.
Speaker 2: That means even if.
Speaker 1: Nobody's ever seen it before, or if it's totally undiscovered,
Speaker 1: Silence can still stop it.
Speaker 3: You know, this algorithm that we feed billions and billions
Speaker 3: of samples of good software and bad software, and through
Speaker 3: machine learning and AI, we train it and it gets
Speaker 3: more and more refined with time, and then the output
Speaker 3: of that algorithm is the software that we actually put
Speaker 3: on people's desktops.
Speaker 4: And what's cool about it is.
Speaker 3: It doesn't need to connect to any server or cloud
Speaker 3: in order to protect you. It it encapsulates all the
Speaker 3: learning that in that application.
Speaker 1: Now, I've been running Silence on my Mac computer to
Speaker 1: try it out, and I got to say, I am impressed.
Speaker 2: It's small, the app is lightweight.
Speaker 1: It kind of stays tucked away in the background until
Speaker 1: it needs to spring into action, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: so far it hasn't had to on my computer. But
Speaker 1: this is on a lot of other anti virus programs,
Speaker 1: even the ones that I've installed on my Mac, They're
Speaker 1: constantly nagging you to do a system scan, update their files,
Speaker 1: or they just in general hog your system resources.
Speaker 4: We've been around for approximately six years.
Speaker 3: We started in the business space and have been very
Speaker 3: successful in that space and quite disruptive, and our plan
Speaker 3: is to replicate that in the consumer space and offer
Speaker 3: consumers a fresh alternative to the commonly perceived system slowing.
Speaker 4: Pop up riddled user experience.
Speaker 3: A lot of users have soured on what they've seen
Speaker 3: in the industry. A lot of vendors will do They'll
Speaker 3: offer a firesale price for the first year, and then
Speaker 3: they get surprise on an auto renewal for a much
Speaker 3: higher price.
Speaker 4: We take a completely different approach.
Speaker 3: We're very transparent in our pricing and we say, look,
Speaker 3: if you sign up for two years, then you'll get
Speaker 3: a benefit, and if you do the math, our two
Speaker 3: year price actually works out to be better than a
Speaker 3: lot of our competitors.
Speaker 1: Silance Smart antivirus software as it's called, starts at thirty
Speaker 1: dollars a year. My pick is the five or ten
Speaker 1: pack of licenses. This can protect all the computers in
Speaker 1: your household. Two years of protection runs eighty or one
Speaker 1: hundred dollars, which is a pretty good value when you
Speaker 1: think about the flip side of having to deal with
Speaker 1: some sort of ransomware mess And I really have no
Speaker 1: doubt that AI and machine learning will be the model
Speaker 1: for computer protection going forward. Silance is just one of
Speaker 1: those companies at the forefront of it right now. If
Speaker 1: you want to learn more, you can go to my
Speaker 1: website For a link, it's Rich on tech dot TV.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for listening. I'm Rich Demiro. I'll talk
Speaker 2: to you real service