Trend Micro is the Japan-based multinational antivirus company. Headquartered in Tokyo, Trend Micro develops software to protect against computer viruses. The company has its offices located in Philippines, Taiwan, Japan, China, France, Germany, Ireland and USA. The company also has a global virus/worm response center, called TrendLabs aimed to research and inform about worldwide security threats.



Trend Micro is widely known for bringing out the PC-cillin range of anti-virus software. The company is also creator of the free, online, browser-based virus scanner, HouseCall. Since 2004, Trend Micro products have been used by the MSN Hotmail to scan messages and attachments in free and Hotmail Plus accounts instead of McAfee; this has greatly popularized the company. The company got little setback in 2005.

2005 was trend micro problem year. The 2005 trend micro problem was created by a high-profile false alarm that caused widespread computer crashes and turmoil across Asia. The company in the same year released a faulty virus pattern file, which resulted in higher-than-normal CPU consumption, causing system slowdowns and problems for some of its OfficeScan, PC-cillin and ServerProtect customers. The company admitted that the trend micro problem was caused by "insufficient work in compatibility testing" before the update was publicly released.

The reason behind the trend micro problem was Trend Micro's OPR (Official Pattern Release) 2.594.00, which was designed to target the growing number of "bot" threats that infect computers, which can be controlled remotely by hackers to spread viruses or spam. One of the patterns within the OPR caused as much as 100 % CPU utilization, with the potential to lock up users' machines. The update was available for roughly 90 minutes, and users had to have automatic updates enabled or had to manually download the file during that time in order to receive the file.

The trend micro problem caused PCs to slow down or stop working around the world. The company officials apologized for trend micro problem due to a faulty software update that caused IT workers around the world to spend the weekend fixing their systems. The company promised to compensate customers who suffered due to trend micro problem.

The company brought out Interscan Web Security Appliance (IWSA) in February 2006. IWSA is an appliance that acts as the first line of defense against threats like spyware, grayware, viruses, and phishing. IWSA is Trend Micro’s latest addition to the company's multi-layered approach to protecting enterprise organizations against spyware and other threats.