Rising Corp will invest 60 million yuan (US$7.9 million) annually to upgrade servers nationwide and partner with banks, brokers and online game firms to provide a more secure password protection to computer users, the Beijing-based anti-virus firm said yesterday.

Rising aims to differentiate itself from rivals through the new services to capture a bigger market share in the growing Chinese Internet security industry which is worth 1.2 billion yuan in 2007, industry insiders said.

Rising has already upgraded 300 servers and the servers will automatically "push" the latest update content to users' Web-linked computers through its newly-launched flagship product Rising Antivirus Personal Edition 2008.

"The traditional anti-virus product is defensive and our vision is active. Previously, virus often infected computers only because users forgot to update virus definition," said Mao Yiding, Rising's vice president.

Meanwhile, Rising allows users to put key programs such as online banking or a game in a list, whose account and password information will be protected at a higher security level via cooperation with the program developers, the first time this has occurred in the domestic anti-virus industry.

Rising has cooperated with 70 game firms, 30 brokers, banks and popular instant message service providers like Guotai Jun'an Securities, GF Securities, China Merchant Bank, MSN and QQ, according to Mao.

"Rising is still the No. 1 in the market but rivals are growing rapidly," iResearch Inc said in a recent note.

In July, Rising's market share in China by user coverage was 36.7 percent, followed by Kaspersky's 33.3 percent and Qihoo Safe360's 31.9 percent, according to iResearch.

New kinds of computer viruses keep appearing. In 2006, Rising detected 230,000 kinds of viruses. In the first half of this year, it detected 130,000 kinds of viruses. The newly detected viruses from 2006 to 2007 will outnumber the combined figures in the previous 10 years, according to Rising.

In 2007, China's Internet security market revenue was worth 1.22 billion yuan, a 16-percent growth year on year, and the figure is likely to hit 1.7 billion yuan in 2010, according to iResearch.

(Shanghai Daily October 18, 2007)