ESET is an IT security company headquartered in Bratislava, Slovakia that was founded in 1992 by the merger of two private companies. The company is privately held and has branch offices in San Diego, California, Wexford, Ireland, London, UK, Buenos Aires, Argentina and Prague, Czech Republic.

ESET's first product was NOD, an antivirus program for computers running MS-DOS. In 1998, ESET introduced NOD32 v1.0 for Microsoft Windows, with version v2.0 following in 2003. The last supported build of the v2.x codebase is v2.70.39, released in November, 2006 to add support for Microsoft Windows Vista. In November, 2007, ESET released v3.0, the current version of the product, and changed its name slightly to ESET NOD32 Antivirus. The company also introduced a new product called ESET Smart Security, which combined ESET NOD32 Antivirus with antispam and firewall functions.

ESET NOD32 Antivirus and ESET Smart Security supports Windows 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista and Server 2008. Support for 64-bit (x86-64, not IA-64) versions of these operating systems is provided, although the program runs both 32-bit and 64-bit processes. Users of older versions of Microsoft Windows, such as Windows 95, 98, Me and NT 4.0, will need to install the older v2.70.39 release. It is unclear for how long the older versions of Microsoft Windows will be supported. In addition to Microsoft Windows the company also supports the following operating systems: BSD, Linux, Novell NetWare and Sun Solaris.

ESET's use of assembly language in its products contributes their low system requirements and disk space utilization.

ESET calls its scanning engine ThreatSense, and makes extensive use of generic signatures and heuristics. This should not be confused with ThreatSense.Net, which is ESET's system for submitting suspicious files and malware to their virus researchers.

ESET's products are regularly tested by organizations such as AV-Comparatives, AV-Test and Virus Bulletin. ESET is the first company to receive 51 VB100 awards from Virus Bulletin and has not missed a single threat in Virus Bulletin's tests in the past six years. ESET's products are regularly certified by ICSA Labs and WestCoastLabs.

External links

• ESET (European headquarters - English language)
• ESET (European headquarters - Slovak language)
• ESET (North American website)
• ESET (world-wide office list)
• ESET (official support forum, hosted by Wilders Security)