Many in our country, because of on-going concerns about our own government’s overreach, have proclaimed their preference to using a program based in another country, especially allies such as Finland, the U.K. The vast majority of security programs on the market are actually from companies outside of the U.S.įor example, popular programs such as AVG & Avast (Czech Republic), Bitdefender (Romania), ESET (Slovakia), F-Secure (Finland), Panda (Spain), Sophos (U.K.) and Trend Micro (Japan) are all controlled by foreign companies. To be realistic, the likelihood that you would somehow become the target of Russian government hackers just because you are using a Kaspersky program is pretty slim, but there’s no reason to take the chance. This most recent allegation certainly makes using the company’s software even more disconcerting.ĭespite the company’s repeated denials of any connection to the Russian government and given the plethora of security programs that don’t come with the Russian baggage, switching to another program is the safest way to go. The founder of the company, Eugene Kaspersky, has long had a cloud of uncertainty over him because of his early ties to the KGB and its replacement, the FSB.Īs a teenager, he studied cryptography in school and, by his mid-20s, he created an anti-virus program to protect his own computer that eventually led to Kaspersky Lab.
General Services Administration’s approved list and, in September, the Department of Homeland Security ordered federal agencies to stop using any software made by Kaspersky Lab because of concerns about the company’s ties to Russian intelligence. In July of this year, software from Kaspersky Lab was removed from the U.S. The theory is that hackers used the file inventory process that Kaspersky antivirus uses to discover the sensitive files and target the contractor.
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