The NOD32 antivirus also known as the ESET NOD32 Antivirus software is manufactured by the company ESET. The full form of NOD is Nemocnica na Okraji Disku, which means ‘hospital at end of the disk’. The antivirus is sold in 2 versions – the business edition and home edition. The business edition of this software includes the ESET Remote Administrator that facilitates server management and deployment, mirrors the malicious signature database updates, and installs on systems that have Microsoft Windows Server as their operating systems.

The first edition of this antivirus was called NOD-ICE. NOD-ICE was a program based on DoS. In the year 1987, the NOD-ICE antivirus was created by Peter Paško and Miroslav Trnka. This was the time when computers and operating systems began to exhibit vulnerabilities towards computer viruses. Because of limitations such as the inability to multitask, the antivirus did not feature on demand for other features of that version. The version of NOD-ICE antivirus had features like virus scanning, cleaning and heuristics analysis.

As the Windows environment began flourishing and the 32-bit CPU started gaining popularity, there was a shift from the PC market to the Internet segment as it was the need of the hour to devise an antivirus which was different. This gave rise to the original NOD32, which was rewritten. This antivirus began to gain popularity among eastern European countries’ IT companies. This was because Slovakia was where ESET was based.

Initially the antivirus program was spelt out with each individual word in the abbreviation. However, across the world, a single word was commonly used to refer to a program which was easier to remember as well. Hence the English word NOD was used to represent this antivirus.

ESET launched the ESET Mail Security on 10th March, 2010 for Microsoft exchange server. The ESET Mail Security includes anti-spam and anti-malware modules. ESET mobile antivirus was replaced by ESET mobile security. The ESET mobile security offered anti-spam and anti-malware modules. As a replacement of ESET mobile antivirus, ESET mobile security contained all the features that its older version had with an addition of newer features. Some of the new features of ESET mobile security included firewall, sim lock, remote wipe, security audit, etc.

A central management console that was designed to allow the administrators of the network to easily manage the ESET software across the corporate network is the ESET Remote Administrator.

The ESET Smart Security version 3.0 that was released by ESET on 5th November, 2007 was an Internet Security suite. The main purpose behind the release of the Internet suite was to compete with the similar products of the industry produced by other competitors such as AVG, McAfee, Kaspersky, etc. This version of ESET Smart Security comes with bidirectional Firewall that features the traditional anti-malware which is found in ESET NOD32 Antivirus and also has an anti-spam module.

The ESET Smart Security 4.0 version was released on 2nd March, 2009. This version of ESET Smart Security came with an updated firewall as well as a self defense module. Subsequently, the dates listed below show the releases of various ESET Smart Security versions.

ESET Smart Security version 4.2 was released on 17th August, 2010 and had a list of changes, enhancements and new features.

• The release of the ESET Smart Security version 5.0 was on 14th September, 2011.
• The ESET Smart Security version 6.0 was released on 15th January, 2013. What was new in this version was that it incorporated an anti-theft module that could track lost, stolen, or misplaced laptops.
• ESET Smart Security version 7.0 was released on 16th October, 2013. This version offered improved memory scan.
• ESET Smart Security version 8.0 was released on 2nd October, 2014.
• ESET Smart Security version 9.0 was released on 13th October, 2015.