Kaspersky Lab

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Kaspersky Lab ZAO

logo
legal form Joint stock company Russian law
founding 1997
Seat Moscow , RussiaRussiaRussia 
management Yevgeny Kaspersky ( CEO )
Number of employees 3900
sales 667 million US dollars (2013)
Branch Software development
Website www.kaspersky.com

Kaspersky Lab is a Russian software company founded in 1997 by Natalja Kasperskaja and Yevgeny Kaspersky . The company, which specializes in the development of security software, has its headquarters in Moscow with national sales offices.

Company history and organization

The Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab was founded in 1997 by the temporarily married Natalja Kasperskaja and Evgeni Kaspersky.

In 2007, Kasperskaja took over the leadership of the newly created Board of Directors, which she left again in summer 2011 to devote herself to InfoWatch , which was founded as a subsidiary of Kaspersky Lab in 2003, as CEO . InfoWatch developed solutions to prevent data leaks or the unauthorized disclosure of confidential information and is now an independent group of companies.

Since then, Yevgeny Kaspersky has served as Chairman of the Board of Directors and CEO of Kaspersky Lab.

The company is divided into three major business areas:

  • Kaspersky Hosted Security Services - Managed Services
  • Kaspersky Open Space Security
  • Kaspersky Small Office Security

A German subsidiary from Ingolstadt has been serving customers in the DA-CH region since September 2004 . From 2007 the Scandinavian countries Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland, from 2008 also the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia were looked after from Germany. The Scandinavian countries are now supported by a branch in Stockholm, while the Benelux countries are supported by a subsidiary in Utrecht . There are further branches in Great Britain, France, Poland, Romania, Sweden, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Japan, China, Korea and the USA.

In 2012 Natalja Kasperskaja took a 16.8% stake in the German manufacturer of security solutions G Data CyberDefense and was elected as a new member of its supervisory board shortly afterwards .

According to its own information, Kaspersky filed a cartel complaint against Microsoft with the German Federal Cartel Office and the EU Commission in June 2017 because Microsoft was hindering free competition in the area of virus scanners . Microsoft, however, emphasizes that they would work closely with the respective manufacturers as part of the Microsoft Virus Initiative (MVI). The complaint is currently being examined.

In May 2018, Kaspersky announced that it would from now on store and process data from most of the world's regions in Switzerland. This was after government agencies had banned Kaspersky products from being extended to suppliers in December 2017. In April, for example, Twitter announced that it would no longer accept advertisements from Kaspersky. In November 2018, at the opening of the first data center in Switzerland, the company boss flirted with the fact that Russia had the best hackers, but that his company would be the first to find out about their activities because they would attack Russian companies first.

Product overview

Kaspersky Lab is known for the high detection performance of its virus scanners and has won several awards for it. According to a 2010 study by International Data Corporation , Kaspersky Lab was the fourth largest provider of endpoint security software in the world in terms of revenue from software sales.

The technologies developed by Kaspersky Lab are licensed by some other companies and used as an engine (core unit) in their antivirus programs.

Important products for the home user area from Kaspersky Lab are:

product Current version description
Kaspersky Anti-Virus 19.0.0.1088, "2019" Antivirus program
Kaspersky Internet Security 19.0.0.1088, "2019" Security package
Kaspersky Total Security 19.0.0.1088, "2019" Security package with additional functions for encryption and an integrated password manager
Kaspersky Internet Security for Mac 18.0.1.35b, "2018" Security package for Mac OS
Kaspersky Internet Security for Android December 2017 Protection against crimeware and data theft if lost for smartphones ; Supported operating systems: Android
Kaspersky Password Manager 8.0.6.538 Password manager with various security features such as virtual keyboard, password generator, backup, etc. for Mac OS and Windows as well as smartphones
Kaspersky Safe Kids - Parental controls for Windows and Mac OS as well as smartphones, with filter for inappropriate websites and restriction of usage time
Kaspersky Anti-Cheat A cloud- based anti-cheat tool for e-sports tournaments.

Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Business includes protection for workstations , file servers , e-mail servers and gateways . The Kaspersky Security Center is included for the central administration and installation of Kaspersky software in the network .

Within the term of the license key, it can be used with a newly published version. In this respect, the software upgrade is “free” with an existing license.

In February 2010 it was announced that the company had patented a "hardware antivirus" .

The heuristic analysis tool developed by Kaspersky Lab to detect viruses that do not yet have a known signature has also been patented.

Furthermore, in November 2016, Kaspersky announced the development of an operating system specializing in security called Kaspersky OS .

In October 2017 "Kaspersky Free" was released.

Positions on data protection

In an interview with a Russian media magazine in 2013, company boss Yevgeny Kaspersky commented on his company's relationship with the surveillance of the Internet by secret services:

“We not only cooperate with the FSB , but also with the Americans and the Brazilians and with a number of European agencies on security issues and cybercrime. We have a group of experts who can crack codes better than anyone else in the world, maybe after the FBI. […] We don't have the ability to do all kinds of detective work, it's not our job. But we give them the information they can use to continue catching criminals. "

In the interview, Kaspersky also counts Russian opposition activists as such criminals insofar as they violate Russian laws and mentions the Russian opposition activist and internet blogger Alexei Navalny by name .

Kasperski's ex-wife and business partner Natalja Kasperskaja is a member of a working group in Putin's presidential office. She affirmed that the Russian secret services want to decrypt all Internet traffic of all Russians and make them accessible to the state. She stressed that this was "an absolutely right thing" "because there is now a part of the Internet that our own country cannot control, and that is not right."

A company affiliated with Kasperskaja supplies the software for the Brandenburg and Berlin police , which contains highly sensitive data. According to the public procurement lawyer Wolfram Krohn, the award is considered unlawful due to an early commitment to the product of EgoSecure GmbH , which belongs to the Infowatch group of Kasperskaja.

The US retail chain Best Buy Co., Inc. withdrew products from the anti-virus manufacturer from its range in early September 2017, as US authorities accused Kaspersky of threatening national security. The reason given for this is the good relations with the Russian secret service. "There are currently too many unanswered questions," quoted the daily StarTribune , as in the past companies were advised against continuing to use the software.

Others

Since 2010, Kaspersky Lab has supported the XY Prize for Moral Courage from the ZDF wanted program Aktenzeichen XY ... unsolved .

Accusation of spying on the USA

On September 13, 2017, the US Department of Homeland Security announced via the short message service Twitter that all US authorities would be prohibited from using Kaspersky products in the future, as it was feared that the Russian state could gain access to sensitive data. Authorities would have 60 days to develop plans for alternatives and 90 days to implement them.

Journalists revealed that the Russian secret service had apparently stolen data from a contract partner of the National Security Agency with the help of Kaspersky software.

The New York Times later researched that the Israeli secret service had broken into Kaspersky's servers and was already reading it in 2014, when the search parameters of the software that Kaspersky uses to identify viruses were expanded to include names that correspond to those of secret US projects . The Israelis warned the US that Russian authorities were using Kaspersky anti-virus software to spy on US government computers. Kaspersky announced in the summer of 2015 that someone had gained access and identified the program used as a variant of Stuxnet , which Israelis and Americans had jointly developed and used. Based on the spied out targets, it was concluded that Israel was the originator.

On December 2, 2017, the National Cyber ​​Security Center (NCSC), a UK government agency dealing with cyber crime and cyber defense , issued a warning to all government agencies against the use of Kaspersky anti-virus programs. It cannot be ruled out that the Russian government may use the information gathered by the Kaspersky programs for its own purposes. This could endanger national security. Although the NCSC had explicitly limited its warning to state institutions, the major bank Barclays stopped its previously practiced distribution of free Kaspersky software in an initial reaction and declared this as a "precautionary measure". However, customers who had already installed the software were not prompted to uninstall it.

Yevgeny Kaspersky denied the American allegations and tried to have the ban lifted.

Web links

Commons : Kaspersky  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ www.ripe.net: Kaspersky Lab AO (Eng.)
  2. ↑ a b About Kaspersky Lab. Retrieved September 7, 2018 .
  3. ↑ Natalya Kaspersky takes a stake in G Data Software AG and becomes a member of the supervisory board
  4. ↑ Antitrust: Pursue It in Europe We Must. Retrieved June 25, 2017
  5. ↑ Microsoft is responding to antivirus antitrust complaint. In: golem.de , accessed on June 25, 2017
  6. ↑ Kaspersky Lab seeks protection in Switzerland , NZZ, May 15, 2018
  7. ↑ Trust posted on SRF Tagesschau main edition, November 13, 2018
  8. ↑ Kaspersky Download Portal. In: www.kaspersky.com. Retrieved September 28, 2016 .
  9. ↑ Kaspersky brings tool against cheats in multiplayer games , Manuel Schulz, 09/12/2019, GameStar
  10. ↑ Against rootkits: Hardware antivirus should protect hard drive on pcwelt.de
  11. ↑ Finally, Our Own OS - Oh Yes! | Nota Bene: Eugene Kaspersky's Official Blog. In: eugene.kaspersky.com. Retrieved November 19, 2016 .
  12. ↑ golem.de: Kaspersky Free is now available in German
  13. ↑ Lenta.ru: Interview with Kaspersky (Russian), accessed on May 29, 2015
  14. ^ "Kommersant": Kaspersky confirmed the authorities' plans to decipher all Russian Internet traffic (Russian), newsru.com, accessed on October 13, 2016
  15. ↑ Kaspersky is supposed to supply Russian secret services , Futurezone , accessed on October 13, 2016
  16. ↑ Police use controversial software for data backup , Welt.de , accessed on October 13, 2016
  17. ↑ Berlin police use controversial Russian software , Morgenpost.de , accessed on October 13, 2016
  18. ↑ Best Buy is taking Kaspersky software out of the program . Heise online , accessed on September 11, 2017.
  19. ↑ Kaspersky Lab supports the “Aktenzeichen XY” online portal. www.kaspersky.de, November 8, 2010, accessed September 6, 2017 .
  20. ↑ US government prohibits authorities from using Kaspersky software. In: sueddeutsche.de. September 13, 2017. Retrieved April 29, 2018 .
  21. ↑ a b c Nicole Perlroth and Scott Shane: "How Israel Caught Russian hacker Scouring the World for US Secrets" New York Times on October 10, 2017
  22. ↑ Russian hackers apparently used Kaspersky virus scanners , FAZ.net , October 11, 2017
  23. ^ Gordon Corera: Kaspersky Labs: Warning over Russian anti-virus software. BBC News, December 2, 2017, accessed December 3, 2017 .
  24. ^ Ian Levy: Managing supply chain risk in cloud-enabled products. National Cyber ​​Security Center, December 1, 2017, accessed December 3, 2017 .
  25. ^ Gordon Corera: Barclays axes free Kaspersky product as a 'precaution'. BBC News, December 2, 2017, accessed December 3, 2017 .
  26. ↑ Marc Neller: "" We need an agreement to stop the cyber war "" Welt.de of February 4, 2018