avast! wins two European SC Awards

London – 25th April 2006: For immediate release: ALWIL Software is proud to announce that it has won the prestigious SC Awards for best antivirus (avast!) and winner of the anti-malware category for the European section of the award event.

ALWIL Software’s avast! product was up against nominated industry leaders in the category.

The annual awards, initially voted for by SC Magazine readers, are one of the most important awards run each year.

The European awards UK ceremony took place at Grosvenor House, London, UK on the 25th April 2006.

Commenting on the win, Eduard Kucera, Vice President and CEO of ALWIL Software said, "Having already won the US section of the awards, we were very pleased to learn that we have now added the European section as well; not only the same sub-category, but also for the whole category prize." Mr. Kucera continued, "This year has been a good year so far for industry recognition of the avast! product line, which gives us hope that we are, indeed, making a best-of-breed product that really meets customer needs."

Ondrej Vlcek, Lead Program Manager and head of development for ALWIL Software commented: "We are obviously over-the-moon that we have added these two prestigious awards to the avast! collection, and would like to thank all of our customers for voting for us. This is proof positive that we are doing it right, and we’ve done that by staying focused on the product and how it meets the needs of all of our customers."

Pavel Baudis, Vice President and "spiritual farther" of the company (as well as being the sole developer of the first edition of what became the avast! product line), who collected the award in London, added: "We’ve worked hard over the last fifteen years to make avast! the product of choice for informed antivirus buyers. Further, we’ve made a Home Edition variant that is free of charge for non-commercial home use, to make sure that the tools needed to protect users and customers are readily available at a great price point, no matter if you are a home user with one PC, or a corporate user with ten thousand desktops and servers. News of this award win shows that we must be doing something right, and I’d like to thank all avast! users for making us a success."

avast! was the only product to win both US and European awards in the same category.

Press Release Ends

Notes to Editors

For press contacts, please email sales@avast.com.

About ALWIL Software - Since 1988 ALWIL Software has produced antivirus products that have been developed into the multi-award winning avast! antivirus product line. Headquartered in Prague, in the Czech Republic, ALWIL Software develops and markets avast! antivirus products that cover everything from U3 devices, desktops, PDA and server protection on multiple platforms. Further details about the company and its products can be found here: http://www.avast.com

About avast! antivirus products - avast! is the multi-award winning antivirus product line from ALWIL Software, which has been ICSA Labs certified and regularly receives the Virus Bulletin 100% award, for detection of 100% of in-the-wild viruses. avast! is specifically engineered to need low system requirements and automatically and incrementally updates both the program and virus definitions, keeping bandwidth usage to a minimum while always being up-to-date.

About SC Magazine Awards 2006 - With over 1,300 product and service nominations from over 330 competing companies globally, the SC Awards are the world’s leading awards program for the information security industry. New this year, the SC Magazine Awards have three separate award programs for the US, UK, and Asia Pacific regions. The awards are composed of the Reader Trust Awards—voted on by SC readers in each region, and the excellence and professional awards that are judged by a panel of the industry’s top talents. Winners were announced at the 2006 SC Awards Gala on April 25th, 2006 which took place at Grovesnor House, London, UK. To view the full list of winners or to learn more about the SC Magazine Awards 2006 please visit: http://www.scawards.com.