We think it's kind of cool that this thing we work on day-to-day is really relevant to everyday people.

This award, especially from a noteworthy publication like PC Magazine, is a testament to all of our employees who work tirelessly to innovate new technologies in order to protect our customers in this current threat environment. We are seeing an increase in the amount of attacks, and a new level of sophistication in the types of attacks that consumers are facing. Over 80 percent of the public does not trust their experience online due to existing and potential threats. Our goal is to make sure that consumers are fully protected around the clock by developing powerful solutions and providing a safe Internet experience.

Outbound protection requires a fairly high level of sophistication to engage, and reports indicate that Microsoft expects that functionality to be used by IT professionals in a business networking environment.

Since the firewall is the first line of defense against hackers, we wanted to make sure we made our free firewall 64-bit compatible first.

We are very pleased to extend our product line to include firewall protection for 64-bit PCs. A dual-layer firewall is the most essential piece of the security to protect against hackers and their nefarious schemes.

I do think it's appropriate for people to be concerned about identity theft, therefore it's not surprising that it has become a topic of interest. One of our biggest efforts has been to really educate consumers about the importance of taking the security of the Internet and their computers seriously.