The wildly popular freebie Malwarebytes anti-malware tool that many users run in addition to their subscription-based antivirus software has gone commercial: The company behind the software yesterday rolled out an enterprise version of the software.

Malwarebytes' new Malwarebytes Enterprise Edition (MEE), like its free precursor, takes a different tack from AV engines, based on predictive heuristics, behavioral, and signature analysis.

"We see ourselves as an add or complementary. We've seen early interest with a majority of customers that have AV and looking to add us to their corporate infrastructure," says Marcus Chung, executive vice president and COO of Malwarebytes.

The free Malwarebytes Anti-Malware tool has been used by more than 150 million users worldwide, according to the company, and serves as a foundation for the new MEE product.

"Targeted malware goes to great lengths to evade antivirus products. Because these attacks are unique and unrecognized by antivirus products, they can penetrate the network and successfully compromise endpoints," says Jon Oltsik, and industry analyst with the Enterprise Strategy Group. "Malwarebytes Enterprise Edition doesn't depend on typical definitions and uses heuristics to stop these intelligently architected attacks before they can execute on endpoints, providing an extra layer of defense today's corporations can well use."

Marcin Kleczynski, CEO and creator of Malwarebytes, says the new software works along with all major AV vendors. "We focus a lot of our energy into plugging those gaps, being complementary to AV not competing," Kleczynski says.

AV engines can't keep up with new malware, he says. "Their engines were built 15 years ago," he says. "They are redesigning their engines to be a lot smarter and use behavior- and heuristics-based detection. Sometimes they take the wrong approach and generate more false-positives."

And it was built for malware removal,, as well, Chung says. "We can remove all traces of an infection," he says. The new MEE also includes a feature that ensures malware protection even when an infection has occurred. "We've built a set of technologies that allows our product to get installed updates ... and be active and run scan and remove malware" regardless, he says.

MEE is shipping now. Pricing for 100-seat licenses starts at $1,315, and Malwarebytes is offering special pricing for government, education, and nonprofits. It supports Windows Server 2003 and 2008, and most versions of Windows clients, including XP, Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8.

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