Gregor Freund

Gregor Freund is an American technologist and serial entrepreneur. He is noted for coining the term “spyware” and developed several patents including his personal firewall and consumer security technologies.

Biography

Freund's personal biographical details such as those covering his early life is not accessible in the public domain. The available information about Freund covers his early career, which began as an employee for Borland International.

During his work for Borland, Freund was able to develop technologies including a data access system, which allows the sharing of files – regardless of the format of individual database files – without the need to make copies.^[1] Freund eventually became the company's principal software architect and was also credited for contributing in the company's expansion by founding Borland's first independent branches in Germany and Italy.^[2]

Freund left Borland and co-founded the startup Starfish Software with the previous Borland CEO, Philippe Kahn.^[3] At Starfish, Freund helped develop smart mobile devices. During this period, Freund was responsible for the company's technologies that powered the device synchronization in the wireless industry.^[4] Due to its patents, Starfish was later acquired by Motorola.

He then went on to work for Zone Labs (later ZoneAlarm). One of Zone Labs innovations that were developed by Freund was the TrueVector technology, which allows users to precisely monitor the activities of users in the Internet. For instance, one of its clients, Media Metrics, used the platform to track people to develop a database of information to determine patterns of Internet usage.^[5]

Freund was also behind several of Zone Labs’ technologies, including ZoneAlarm, the first personal firewall, and Integrity, an enterprise security solution.^[6] In 2005, Zone Labs also introduced what it claimed to be the world's first spyware solution based on next-generation firewall technology.^[7] Freund himself was credited for coining the term “spyware“ in 1999, when he used it in a Zone Labs’ press release for ZoneAlarm Personal Firewall.^[8][9][10] Freund established other startups such as Versal, a collaboration tool used in education. He also became the CTO of Check Point Software Technologies and was a co-founder of Tumoni.^[11]

Freund is married to Cecilia Freund.

References

1. "Patents Assigned to Borland International, Inc". Justia Patents. November 22, 1995. https://patents.justia.com/assignee/borland-international-inc?page=2
2. DLD Conference (n.d). “Gregor Freund”. DLD Conference. https://dld-conference.com/speaker/gregor-freund.
3. "Online Learning: Moving Beyond Videos Meet Up | SXSW 2016 Event Schedule". SXSW. https://schedule.sxsw.com/2016/events/event_PP56848
4. Ducere Foundation (n.d.). “Gregor Freund”. Ducere Foundation. https://www.ducerefoundation.org/ducere-glf-member/gregor-freund
5. "Media Metrix taps Zone Labs for tracking technology". CNET. https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/media-metrix-taps-zone-labs-for-tracking-technology/.
6. ZoneLabs (n.d.). Zone Labs Management Team. ZoneLabs. http://download.zonelabs.com/bin/media/pdf/managementteam.pdf.
7. UPI (2005). “Zone Labs debuts anti-spyware firewall”. Phys.org. https://phys.org/news/2005-10-zone-labs-debuts-anti-spyware-firewall.html.
8. Avoine, Gildas; Junod, Pascal; Oechslin, Philippe (2007-07-13). Computer System Security: Basic Concepts and Solved Exercises. EPFL Press. ISBN 978-1-4200-4620-5. p. 25
9. Wienbar, Sharon. "The Spyware Inferno Archived May 10, 2011, at the Wayback Machine". News.com. August 13, 2004. https://web.archive.org/web/20110510085748/http://news.cnet.com/2010-1032-5307831.html
10. Tech Monitor (2005). “Zone Labs adds anti-spyware tools”. Tech Monitor. https://www.techmonitor.ai/technology/zone_labs_adds_anti_spyware_tools?cf-view
11. Riddell, Roger (2014). “Versal CEO: Building online courses should be easy [CES 2014]”. K-12 Dive. https://www.k12dive.com/news/versal-ceo-building-online-courses-should-be-easy-ces-2014/214566/