ESET LLC said Oct. 29 it has introduced a new security solution aimed at preventing “blending” threats for consumers and small- to medium-sized businesses.

The product, named ESET Smart Security, uses less than 40 megabytes of disk space and costs $59.99 for individual users and $40.99 per seat for business users up to five to 10 seats.

“There was a need for a very accurate product,” said Anton Zajac, chief executive officer of the San Diego-based company. “We can deliver a very accurate result with very fast screening.”

ESET Smart Security combines anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-spam and firewall features with ESET’s ThreatSense detection system and NOD32 scanning engine and can scan up to 30 times faster than competitive products, according to a statement from ESET.

Because threats have become more intricate, there is a need for software that can identify what ESET calls “blended” threats without affecting the speed or efficiency of each computer. Zajac said that there are more than 100,000 new, unique samples of malicious code and it can take up to five minutes for some computers to detect them.

“It’s proactive,” Zajac said about Smart Security. “It can detect threats that have not been discovered.”

— Jaimy Lee