For companies like Symantec (NASDAQ: SYMC) and McAfee (NYSE: MFE), the antivirus software industry is quite lucrative – and still growing quite nicely. So, it should be no surprise that competitors want a piece of the action.

One of the latest entrants: Haute Secure. Basically, the company has a plugin that blocks dangerous websites (which may have malware, phishing and so on).

More importantly, the service is free. Although, there are some exceptions (there is a paid service for business customers).

I had a chance to interview Nick Selby, who is the director of research operations of the enterprise security practice at The 451 Group. According to him:

"As drive-by downloads and malicious code appears on increasing numbers of websites, these kinds of technologies are proliferating. Companies such as Grisoft (formerly AVG) recently acquired Exploit Prevention Labs, which works in a similar fashion, for what we reckon was under $10m, and others, such as Finjan, McAfee and Symantec are pushing their entries in this space. Another UK-based start-ip, Prevyx, shares malware information with its global network of users to identify and block malicious code from running on protected machines."

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements. He also operates DealProfiles.com.