nProtect (INCA Internet)

INCA Internet, better known by its nProtect product brand, is a South Korean security vendor covering anti-malware and anti-spyware endpoint protection, online-transaction security for banking and e-commerce, firewall and unified corporate security, and — notably — game security. Its nProtect GameGuard anti-cheat rootkit is widely embedded in online games across Korea and Japan to block cheat tools and unauthorized memory manipulation, a niche the company has occupied since the early 2000s alongside its more conventional endpoint and transaction-security lines.

Founded in 2000 by Young Heum Joo, who remains CEO, INCA Internet is headquartered in Seoul, South Korea, and remains a privately held company with reported annual revenue of roughly $20 million. The company says its products protect over 100 million endpoint users across more than 1,000 organizations, with a customer base concentrated in Korea and Japan and expansion efforts into India and Southeast Asia through its nProtect AppGuard mobile security line. Unlike most companies profiled on this site, INCA Internet’s core market is East Asian rather than Western, which limits the amount of independent English-language scrutiny and analyst coverage available on its actual technical performance.

nProtect’s differentiation is its dual focus on conventional endpoint/transaction security and game-specific anti-cheat technology, a combination that reflects Korea’s large online-gaming market as much as its banking-security requirements — a positioning that has kept the company relevant regionally for two decades even without the venture funding or global enterprise footprint of Western endpoint security vendors.