Updates to NVR Commercial price, Subscription, and Virtual Machine issues

Date: 2018-10-30

We are announcing following upcoming updates: (The rationale will be explained in the following text)

1. Subscription Edition stopped offering new license: Effective immediately, Genius Vision has decided to stop offering new Subscription Edition license.

2. Commercial license price update
   Starting from 2019-02-01, the pricing will be changed to Professional: $80 USD/channel, Intelligent: $110 USD/channel, Panoramic: $150 USD/channel.

3. Virtual Machines no longer applicable for commercial license.
   We found many users are systematically exploiting Virtual Machines to evade properly paying Genius Vision license fee. Therefore this step is necessary to protect our revenue.

Rationale

As this article that we posted on Facebook at 10/22, and this news update we announced at 10/26, we have recently detected a group of people of unknown origin, who are operating internationally. We were originally lead to believe that this unknown group has only recently targeted Genius Vision. However, after more study to the historical data, we found Genius Vision has been targeted since mid-2017, maybe even earlier. This recent wave of attacks has intensified significantly during early this October that made us became aware of such threat. Therefore, we are forced to make a serious effort to figure out the extent of this threat.

We believe the purpose of this unknown group is to gain control access of Genius Vision through improper methods (in other words, "hacking" at personnel-level). These methods include attacking Genius Vision's technical and business consultation channels through misleading information and high-frequency inquiry, using classical social engineering methods. Though the attacks are now believed to have started since mid-2017, it can be observed the attack has intensified during March 2018. At that particular moment, Genius Vision was trying to increase revenue by making trial policies more strict.

It would seem that we have managed to successfully fight off these attacks so far. That's why the attack has intensified significantly since October, that made us become aware. From now on, we will be following up "closely" on this issue.

As always, Genius Vision as a software developer, we believe quality software comes from integrity, honesty, and business ethics. We sincerely apologize if recent policy changes have caused some inconvenience, but it's necessary for us to stand against this kind of unknown group.

Thank you for your continued support for Genius Vision products.