An Ethical Crossroad at the Beginning of Our Company

A Major Partner of Our Cybersecurity Business has Been Fined by The FTC

Let me start by saying that my business is a certified reseller of Avast Business Security Suite. Even with that being the case I think you will find my review of this issue to be consistent with my style yet uncharacteristic with the risk and increased within strategy.

Avast has reached a settlement with the FTC for $16.5 Million for selling consumers data to third parties, whilst being entrusted to protect it. The settlement referred to data collected and redistributed from 2014-2020. Avast was happy to settle and reaffirmed it’s mission to “empower people’s digital lives.”

Let’s cut straight to the chase; what’s my opinion? Caught once, watched twice. This is a great thing for my partnership with Avast. Knowing they are under the watchful eye of a fine happy, quick to take your money agency such as the FTC is the perfect check and balance that makes for an opportunity in America. Avast basically has no choice but to make and sell a great product. Lets see what happens next.

Data privacy was a grey area at best until GDPR came around. Even the complaint that was filed was from the UK, not the United States. My point is we are still trying to train this behavior out of businesses. As I mentioned before in these types of cases with cyber and information security I’ve learned to trust the businesses and products that have had a bad brush with compliance, or an attack (either will do, but compliance is more effective within a regular cadence).

What is fact is that provisions of the settlement included restrictions on specific actions such as sale of consumer data to third parties.