Sunbelt Software, a Windows security software specialist, says that the move comes in the wake of record international growth and the signing of several OEM plus distribution agreements with partners in Europe over the last 12 months.
David Parkin, Sunbelt Software's sales director for the region, said that the last year has been one of burgeoning growth in Europe and, as such, the company needed to expand its facilities to enable it to continue to meet the rising demand for software.
"In addition to being a base for the sales and technical support teams that work with our partners and customers throughout Europe, the new office in Marlow becomes the European research hub", he said.
The Marlow centre will, he added, be tasked with researching the latest threats work closely with SunbeltLabs' team in Tampa, Florida, to provide a global outlook on the latest malware developments.
One of the most interesting developments on this front, according to Subbelt's security researcher Chris Boyd (aka Paperghost) is a PS2 emulator being touted on the internet as "far superior to all other PS2 Emulators released before it."
Boyd says that web surfers should always be wary of "free applications" on the Internet and the Play 2 Emulator is no exception.
According to the IT security researcher, Play 2 Emulator comes in three flavours: "crack," "keygen," and "serial."
In his security blog, Boyd says that the files are not emulators at all, but something more sinister.
"A pair of files will be dropped onto your PC, including a randomly named executable in the Windows directory and xpysys.dll in your System32 Folder", he said in the Sunbelt blog.
"You've actually wound up with Trojan-Downloader Win32.CodecPack.2GCash.Gen", he added.
Boyd noted that this particular trojan has been used in everything from "fake codec scams to rogue AV hijacks in previous months, and is probably going to stick around for quite some time."
He also added that, in some cases, infected surfers have reported rogue anti-virus programs appearing after acquiring the trojan.