Trend Micro

History

The company was founded in 1989 in Los Angeles by Steve Chang (張明正, Chang Ming-cheng), 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 Japan. 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.

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 Steve Chang as chief executive officer of Trend Micro in January 2005. Chen had most recently served as the company’s chief technology officer since 1996 and before that executive vice president since the company’s founding in October 1989. Steve Chang retained his position as company chairman. In May, Trend Micro acquired Braintree, Massachusetts-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 San Jose, California-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 Mountain View, California-based data loss prevention software developer Provilla. Provilla was the creator 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. 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 May 19, 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, Ontario 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.

Trend Micro acquired Leeds, England-based humyo in June 2010 for an undisclosed sum. humyo provided cloud-based data storage and synchronization services to small businesses and individuals. Later that year, in November, Trend Micro acquired Mobile Armor. Mobile Armor was a developer of full disk, file and folder, and removable media encryption for mobile devices. Trend Micro integrated the company’s technology into a centrally-managed platform for mobile device security.

In June 2012, Trend Micro acquired Marlborough, Massachusetts-based Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate provider AffirmTrust for an undisclosed sum. Trend Micro followed up with another acquisition, Taiwanese advanced network security firm Broadweb, in October 2012. Broadweb was a developer of deep packet inspection technology that had the ability to block malicious data packets in real-time. The technology was integrated into Trend Micro’s Custom Defense Solution, a suite that was designed to provide network-wide visibility and protection against advanced attacks and threats.

Trend Micro relocated its US headquarters to the Las Colinas area of Irving, Texas in September 2013. The relocation allowed the company to consolidate operations previously housed in Cupertino, California and Arlington, Texas.

In September 2014, Trend Micro began a three-year partnership with INTERPOL wherein Trend Micro shared with the international police organization information on cybercrime threats via the company’s Threat Intelligence Service. According to INTERPOL, the information helped the international police organization and its 190 member countries decrease cybercrime on a global scale. Trend Micro also provided a cybercrime investigation training program to INTERPOL. Also in 2014, Trend Micro expanded its Cloud App Security to work with Microsoft Office 365. By 2016, the Cloud App Security software was expanded to cover Box, Dropbox and Google Drive.

In October 2015, Trend Micro reached an agreement to buy TippingPoint, a network and software security developer from HP Inc. for $300 million. That same year, Trend Micro was certified as a VCE validation ready solution and Vblock ready through the VCE Technology Alliance Partner program. Later, Trend Micro joined the VCE Select Program, which allowed Trend Micro's Deep Security to be bundled with VCE's converged and hyper-converged infrastructure systems. Gartner named Trend Micro to the "Leaders" ranking of its Magic Quadrant rating for Endpoint Protection Platforms in both 2015 and 2016. In 2016, Trend Micro discovered that a variant of a virus affecting Android phones was able to infect smart TVs.

Technologies

In June 2008, Trend Micro introduced Trend Micro Smart Protection Network, a cloud-client content security infrastructure that delivers global threat intelligence to protect customers from online threats, such as data stealing malware, phishing attacks, and other web, email, and mobile threats. In 2012, Trend Micro added big data analytics to its Smart Protection Network. Big data analytics allow the network to use behavioral-based identification methods to identify new security threats. The network also combines in-the-cloud technologies with other client-based antivirus technologies to reduce dependency on conventional pattern file downloads on the endpoint. Threat information from Trend Micro’s Smart Protection Network is deployed in real time to the company’s security software portfolio.

Trend Micro receives its threat intelligence from TrendLabs, the company’s research, development, and support center. TrendLabs has ten labs worldwide, and is headquartered in the Philippines and employs 1,200 security experts and engineers. The company’s Singapore-based lab provides malware forensics and analysis.