If you build it, sometimes they do come.

Malwarebytes, the pioneer of one of the most advanced anti-malware protection and removal software tools in the industry, announced today it achieved significant milestones including the broad acceptance of its anti-malware software within the data protection industry, a key corporate acquisition that expands its protection capabilities and the company’s expansion into the EMEA marketplace.

"This is a significant step in the growth of Malwarebytes," said Marcin Kleczynski, Malwarebytes founder and CEO, in a statement. "We acquired a key technology to expand our product features, expanded operations into the EMEA region, and our momentum is clearly growing with more than one million new users every month.”

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware works alongside antivirus programs and has become the de facto standard in the industry as evidenced by its recent accomplishment of achieving over 100 million downloads and detecting and removing over 5 billion malware threats.

In addition to its product accomplishments, Malwarebytes recently completed the acquisition of hpHosts, a popular and trusted blacklist of malicious websites, ad servers and tracking servers. The acquisition ensures that Malwarebytes protects against the newest malevolent internet protocol (IP) addresses and harmful links while blocking the web servers being used to distribute the actual malware.

Additionally, the blacklist is used as leverage to persuade Internet service providers (ISPs) to shut down active malware-producing servers, helping to curb the malware problem for the Internet community as a whole.

“We’re passionate about what we do, and having the ability to not only protect consumer and corporate desktops but to actually stop malware from being distributed to millions of innocents underscores that we’re in this to make a difference, not just to make a living,” Kleczynski added. “hpHosts is well-known in the security realm and we’re pleased to be able to bring them onboard."

hpHosts will still provide a free central repository of malicious sources for non-commercial use.

In addition, the company recently hired Fernando Francisco to lead its EMEA operations. Francisco has over 10 years of direct experience in information security and technology, holding senior executive positions with several major PC security firms including Lavasoft Ad-Aware and Prevx (recently acquired by Webroot). He was also with F-Secure where he expanded the company throughout Europe. Most recently he served as CEO of Returnil.

“Malwarebytes is a young company with an extremely bright future," said Francisco, in a statement. "To have achieved such a great reputation primarily on word of mouth is amazing and only serves to highlight the strength of its solution."