Internet security firm Trend Micro teamed up with Taiwanese gaming companies to launch a mobile security app on Monday that promises a safer environment for local gamers

April 14, 2014 Leave a comment

Trend Micro launches security app for gaming industry

CNA
March 31, 2014, 12:08 am TWN

TAIPEI — Internet security firm Trend Micro Inc. teamed up with Taiwanese gaming companies to launch a mobile security app on Monday that promises a safer environment for local gamers.

The free security app, developed in cooperation with 18 local gaming companies and four mobile payment service providers, can identify and block malware programs within gaming apps that are capable of stealing personal data or virtual items purchased by users.

The Android version of the app also provides a list of authenticated gaming apps and a secured platform to make mobile payments, Trend Micro said.

An iOS version will be available within a month, the company said.

“We’re offering a happy and secured platform for the country’s gamers, who range from 5 to 80 years old,” Trend Micro co-founder and CEO Eva Chen told a press conference held to announce the alliance with the local gaming industry.

A study by the government-funded Institute for Information Industry found that of the estimated 15.8 million people who used fixed or mobile Internet in Taiwan last year, more than 34 percent of them had purchased virtual items within games.

Of that group, more than 3 million gaming users had virtual items they purchased stolen by malware programs or hackers, the study found.

An estimated NT$7.2 billion (US$235 million) in virtual items are stolen per year, similar to the total annual output value of all of Taiwan’s gaming companies, according to a survey by Bahamut, a community site for local gamers.

 

Filed under TMT Trends

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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