Trend Micro Inc. (トレンドマイクロ株式会社, Torendo Maikuro Kabushiki-Gaisha) is an American-Japanese cyber security software company. The company has globally dispersed R&D in 16 locations across every continent excluding Antarctica. The company develops enterprise security software for servers, containers, and cloud computing environments, networks, and end points. Its cloud and virtualization security products provide automated security for customers of VMware, Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. Eva Chen is a co-founder, and chief executive officer since 2005. She succeeded founding CEO Steve Chang, who now is chairman.
Corporate history
1988–1999 The company was founded in 1988 in Los Angeles by Steve Chang, his wife, Jenny Chang, and her sister, Eva Chen (陳怡樺). The company was established with proceeds from Steve Chang's previous sale of a copy protection dongle to a United States–based Rainbow Technologies. Shortly after establishing the company, its founders moved headquarters to Taipei. In 1992, Trend Micro took over a Japanese software firm to form Trend Micro Devices and established headquarters in Tokyo. It then made an agreement with CPU maker Intel, under which it produced an anti-virus product for local area networks (LANs) for sale under the Intel brand. Intel paid royalties to Trend Micro for sales of LANDesk Virus Protect in the United States and Europe, while Trend paid royalties to Intel for sales in Asia. In 1993, Novell began bundling the product with its network operating system. In 1996, the two companies agreed to a two-year continuation of the agreement in which Trend was allowed to globally market the ServerProtect product under its own brand alongside Intel's LANDesk brand. Trend Micro was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 1998 under the ticker 4704. The company began trading on the United States–based NASDAQ stock exchange in July 1999.
2000s In 2004, founding chief executive officer Steve Chang decided to split the responsibilities of CEO and chairman of the company. Company co-founder Eva Chen succeeded Chang as chief executive officer of Trend Micro in January 2005. Chen has been the company's chief technology officer since 1996 and before that executive vice president since the company's founding in October 1989. Chang retained his position as company chairman. In May, Trend Micro acquired US-based antispyware company InterMute for $15 million. Trend Micro had fully integrated InterMute's SpySubtract antispyware program into its antispyware product offerings by the end of that year. In June 2005 Trend Micro acquired Kelkea, a US-based developer of antispam software. Kelkea developed Mail Abuse Prevention System (MAPS) and IP filtering software that allowed internet service providers to block spam and phishing scams. Kelkea chief executive officer Dave Rand was retained by Trend Micro as its chief technologist for content security. In March 2007, Trend Micro acquired freeware antispyware program HijackThis from its creator Merijn Bellekom for an undisclosed sum. Trend Micro delisted its depository shares from the NASDAQ stock exchange in May. Later that year, in October, Trend Micro acquired US-based data loss prevention software developer Provilla. Provilla was the creator of LeakProof, software that allowed companies to block the transmission of sensitive data and warn security managers about transmission attempts. Trend Micro acquired Identum in February 2008 for an undisclosed sum. Identum, which was founded in and later spun-off from the University of Bristol cryptography department, developed ID-based email encryption software. Identum's chairman was serial entrepreneur, Steve Purdham. The two companies were originally in talks for Trend Micro to license Identum's technology, but Trend Micro later decided to purchase the firm outright. Identum was renamed Trend Micro (Bristol) and its encryption technology was integrated into existing Trend Micro products. Existing Identum products were continued but sold under the Trend Micro brand. Also that year, Trend Micro sued Barracuda Networks for the latter's distribution of ClamAV as part of a security package. Trend Micro claimed that Barracuda's use of ClamAV infringed on a software patent owned by Trend Micro for filtering viruses on an Internet gateway. On 19 May 2011, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued a Final Rejection in the reexamination of Trend Micro's U.S. patent 5,623,600. In April 2009, Trend Micro acquired Ottawa, Canada–based Third Brigade for an undisclosed sum. Third Brigade developed host-based intrusion prevention and firewall software that had been used by Trend Micro in its Trend OfficeScan anti-malware suite for two years prior to acquiring Third Brigade. Third Brigade was reincorporated as Trend Micro Canada Technologies.
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