Malwarebytes

Marcin Kleczynski was a teenager when the family computer got infected and none of the big antivirus products could clean it. Help from a security forum turned into a tool of his own, and in 2008 the company was formed. The free scanner became standard advice on every tech forum: run it alongside your regular antivirus.

The niche was exactly what the incumbents ignored — adware, toolbars, fake system optimisers and the rest of the grey zone between annoying and malicious. Over the years Malwarebytes grew into a full security vendor with real-time protection, a VPN and enterprise products, thereby becoming precisely the kind of antivirus it once supplemented.