Interview with Uniblue Systems, the developer of popular WinTasks and WinBackup programs

Uniblue's Vice President for Marketing, Mr Johan Malmberg talks with PC Flank about modern security issues surrounding the Internet, and also familiarizes with some of the products his company develops.

1. PC Flank: Please tell us about your company. How did you create it, with what goals, how many people were there at the moment of its foundation?
   
   JM: Uniblue Systems (formerly LIUtilities) was found in 1999 with a vision to facilitate and improve the way people and businesses handle and protect their important data. Our mission is to design and deliver intuitive, innovative, and flexible data protection and recovery solutions for the domestic and business markets. By listening to our customers and anticipating their needs, we will continue delivering products that are as easy to use as they are powerful and reliable. Our business is protection and recovery - we are committed to create the most intuitive, innovative, and flexible data protection and recovery solutions for the domestic and business markets.
   
   We are committed to provide a unique set of offerings that match our customers' priorities for ease-of-use, power, reliability, and cost effectiveness. We are dedicated to continue delivering value to our customers through our distinctive and differentiated solutions and through the highest levels and quality of customer service and support.
   
   With all our product ranges, our business customers enjoy an easy to use, powerful, and reliable enterprise-level backup and recovery management solution that, in contrast to most other competing brands, minimizes cost of ownership. We are renowned in the home-user market for our easy to use and powerful software.
   
   The release of our new flagship product range, WinBackup 2.0, marks the most important milestone for us and our customers. We are now positioned to further penetrate our strong foothold in the small- and medium-sized business market, and we will continue consolidating our leadership position in the domestic market.
   
   
2. PC Flank: Among your customers are some well-known multinational companies. What do you think it takes for a small company like yours to achieve and sustain such a huge success?
   
   JM: We believe that success is achieved by a variety of factors. Our products are central to our success. However, the challenge is to continue attracting new and profitable customers while forming ever tighter bonds with existing ones and optimising these relationships over their lifetime by creating genuine value. We think that our products deliver superior value to our customers irrespective of whether they are small or medium sized businesses or large enterprises. You need to be in touch with your customers and prospects. We also believe that for success you need to have a vision of where you want to go and have the people with the right skills and knowledge to translate that vision into a reality.
   
   
3. PC Flank: As our site aims to educate home users on how to use their Internet-connected computers safely and privately, what products can your company offer in that respect? What educational materials can you recommend for our visitors to read, considering that there are plenty of them on your site?
   
   JM: Sound security architecture is of essence these days whether you are a home user or a business user. With all the threats to data, you have to have anti-intrusion, anti-virus and anti-spyware software. However, these products switch on only when the problem is happening - they do not prevent data loss. An experienced hacker, for example, can elude the most sophisticated anti-intrusion products. Of course, few hackers would want to go into a home system, however just consider the spyware companies. They collect data of your behavior on the Internet and use that information to sell you all sorts of things. Backup is the only true prevention in case of data loss. The product that we provide in this respect is called WinBackup 2.0 which is being released this week. WinBackup 2.0 is not just an improved version of its predecessor. In fact, we have spent the past two years in the development of this entirely new product. Not only is WinBackup 2.0 by far the easiest to use backup software available on the market but its features will probably place it as the fastest and the most cost-effective backup and recovery management software so far. The new software delivers full protection if and when things go wrong.
   
   Regarding education material on our site, I think the best place to start is the new set of white papers that we will be publishing shortly. There are also the new Tech Briefs that will be released over the coming weeks. Although they are oriented towards businesses, home users will find all interesting and may learn more on how to prevent data loss. There are also sets of tutorials on our resources pages. We have a newsletter that we issue twice a month and people can register for that. Of course, if they need help, they can always send us an email with their questions - our customer support team is there to solve problems.
   
   
4. PC Flank: The overall Windows security being a never-ending saga, what simple steps should in your opinion be taken to secure users' PCs?
   
   JM: I couldn't have put it better myself! It is a never-ending saga that is and people are always coming up with new ways of beating the system. It is human nature! In this scenario, we believe that you have to look at two things: (a) not letting people in and (b) protecting what intruders want of your PC (your data). Using products like anti-spyware and anti-viruses will give you some cover, however what you need is to make sure that if someone does get to your data, that data is not destroyed in whole or in part. Regular backups are the only way of doing this.
   
   
5. PC Flank: Please introduce us to the products your company develops. How can they be applied at home to help stay secure and protected?
   
   JM: We have three main products WinBackup 2.0, WinTasks 5.0 and SpeedUpMyPC. WinBackup 2.0, the fastest backup and recovery software on the market, allows you to secure all your valuable data within minutes. Featuring a Windows-familiar and intuitive graphical user interface, WinBackup 2.0 makes it extremely easy to set up and run regular backups in your existing environment. With shortcuts to over a 100 of the most popular applications, WinBackup 2.0 makes it possible to easily and quickly backup emails, address books, bookmarks, digital images, financial documents and other records at the click of a button. Users can rely completely on WinBackup 2.0 for full data consistency and integrity without compromising superior performance. WinBackup is sold in three versions: WinBackup Standard for small and home office market, WinBackup 2.0 Professional and WinBackup 2.0 Server for small and medium sized businesses or for workgroups in large organisations. The Server version will be released a month after the Professional and the SoHo versions.
   
   WinTasks 5.0 Standard and Professional which can remove and prevent hidden spyware and other processes that firewalls or anti-virus software do not know about. WinTasks, for example, has a process blocking feature that gives the user immediate protection and complete control. This feature functions like a "spy-wall" - a software firewall, blocking threats in real-time. When a program tries to start, WinTasks either blocks or runs the program, while quickly learning which programs you consider safe. WinTasks can also check our extensive database to automatically permit safe (Process Library Certified) programs. WinTasks provides detailed information, activity logs, and other features describe every process running on your computer. WinTasks has easy-to-use tools that allow you to control, block, or terminate any process.
   
   SpeedUpMyPC 2.0 automatically finds the best settings for your PC and carefully controls your system resources to give you the best performance. Easy to use, this award-winning utility has all the features you could ever need to clean up your system, monitor resources, and improve performance.
   
   
6. PC Flank: WinTasks Pro, a tremendous tool to find out what's currently performing on your computer, how tight is the market for this type of software?
   
   JM: WinTasks is extremely successful simply because the native process control tool of Windows does not tell you anything about the processes that it is running. Moreover, it doesn't allow control. WinTasks does this. When used in conjunction with the various security tools in existence today, WinTasks provides excellent control tool - WinBackup provides the protection! The market does not seem to be expanding because people do not realize the importance of having full control over their processes. Having said this, however, even in the case of full knowledge of these control products, we don't see the market expanding much beyond its present levels.
   
   
7. PC Flank: In a small home network, how can the Administrator view what's running on other connected PCs? Does WinTasks have such feature to remotely monitor active processes?
   
   JM: We intend to integrate this feature into WinTasks at a later date. At this point in time, however, people can buy an Administrator license and have WinTasks run on all the machines on the small home network. The Administrator can then remotely activate WinTasks and use it to control processes on the individual computers
   
   
8. PC Flank: Last time a worm hit my computer it disabled the Windows Task Manager so I was unable to kill the propagating malware. Could your program be neutralized in a similar fashion following a simple registry tinkering. What do you advise our users if they suspect the presence of a destructive element in their systems?
   
   JM: All products can be neutralized as I have said before. Also, we work very hard to keep our products updated but like all other products we cannot be 100% indestructible. That is why we say that the only way to protect your data is to back it up regularly. Firewalls, anti-virus, anti-and anti-spyware are very important products and in most instances they are excellent security measures. Therefore, you really have to look at processes. However, the only real prevention is backing up regularly.
   
   
9. PC Flank: Testing WinTasks, in rare cases no description to a process's name was available, making it harder to verify its legitimacy. What do you think of creating something like WinTasks user community exchange, enabling its members to create, view, modify and share descriptions for new executables that were missed out, a sort of contributable library?
   
   JM: We have considered having this type of open exchange but we opted out simply because in that case we would have no control over the quality and integrity of the descriptions and the service we provide free of charge to our audience. We work very hard to keep our process library updated (go to www.processlibrary.com) and through it we deliver a quality product to all concerned.
   
   
10. PC Flank: What other features are you planning to add to WinTasks in future? Are there any plans to alert a user when the program encounters malicious process in memory? Would it be able to automatically terminate them and deny future auto startups?
    
    JM: If you look at the answer to Q5 this can be done already with the existing product. Regarding new features in WinTasks, we intend to make some very important jumps in technology. However, enough said.
    
    
11. PC Flank: WinBackup, the solution helping users to backup and later restore their files and programs, how advantageous is it over the standard Windows XP - bundled Backup utility?
    
    JM: WinBackup 2.0 drives continuity in the event of data loss to the next level for home and business users alike. Featuring a highly intuitive, exceptionally simple graphical user interface, WinBackup 2.0 allows users to run backups and restores at the click of a button. WinBackup 2.0 delivers complete data protection through a comprehensive and powerful set of enterprise-level features. WinBackup 2.0 is the most cost-effective backup solution available, allowing small and medium sized businesses to optimize their resources by choosing an exceedingly powerful backup and recovery management solution that is 100% reliable. We do not believe that the Windows backup product can deliver this to the home and business user.
    
    
12. PC Flank: With WinBackup 2.0 release forthcoming, what new interesting features are added, how the transition from earlier versions will take place?
    
    JM: We have described the new WinBackup in Questions 5 and 11. Also, I would like you to refer to the following pages on our website: www.liutilities.com/products/winbackup and http://www.liutilities.com/products/winbackup/benefits describe the product while http://www.liutilities.com/products/winbackup/features describes all the features that are found in the new product together with a whole list of comparison sheets at http://www.liutilities.com/products/winbackup/comparison . Most importantly you should also check out our "What's New" page at http://www.liutilities.com/products/winbackup/newinwb2 .
    
    
13. PC Flank: What do you think is the most dangerous type of malware. Have you been hit by any? If so, was it WinTasks that helped you detect it or WinBackup which assisted in restoring your computer?
    
    JM: Virus and Trojans are probably the number one type of destroyers of data (aside from human intervention). Adware and spyware are intrusions on performance and privacy rather than jeopardizing data integrity. They are however extremely intrusive and annoying. With regard to our systems we have a very strong security architecture with accompanying stringent policies for our employees and users. We believe however that all said and done, prevention is better than cure and in today's world you have to practice regular and frequent backups of your data. Of course, we use all our products!
    
    
14. PC Flank: Do you get a lot of spam and phishing? How do you feel about it? Are you afraid of DDoS attacks? Are they preventable in your opinion?
    
    JM: We put most of our trust on backups as I said before. Spamming, phishing and DDoS are major problems that can be tackled by using the products available today. We have a very good anti-spam software and we are managing extremely well with it. With regard to DDoS, they are not completely preventable as I argued earlier - you always find someone who is hell bent on making it difficult for everybody else. Our main concerns are our web servers and servers that are connected to the Internet. However, DDoS as I understand it is not something that we could control and this falls in the jurisdiction of our Internet Service Provider. Having said that, we chose an ISP that has a strong security architecture and, like us, takes immediate action when there is a problem.