The US Government Banned Kaspersky Antivirus
Kaspersky Lab, the Russian cyber security company, maintains almost 400 million users worldwide. This will come as a shock to you that the Trump administration on Tuesday removed Kaspersky Lab from two lists of approved vendors chosen by government agencies to purchase technology equipment.Here’s what General Services Administration said:
“GSA’s priorities are to ensure the security and integrity of US government networks and systems and evaluate service and products and available on their contracts using supply chain risk management processes.”
Well, this is not the first time Kaspersky had raised concerns regarding the collaboration with Russia. Recently, reports from US-based Media, including Bloomberg News suggest that the security firm had great ties than initially thought with Russian intelligence agency FSB.
Bloomberg claimed that they had captured internal company emails that served as proof of a ‘much closer working relationship’ between Kaspersky and FSB. However, Kaspersky Lab said the communication was ‘misinterpreted or manipulated.’
Here’s what the firm said:
“Kaspersky Lab is very public about the fact that it assists law enforcement agencies around the world with fighting cyber threats, including those in Russia, by providing cyber security expertise on malware and cyber attacks.”
“When assisting in official Russian cyber crime investigations, by Russian law, we only provide technical expertise throughout the investigation to help them catch cyber criminals. Concerning raids and physically catching cyber criminals, Kaspersky-Lab might ride along to examine any digital evidence found, but that is the extent of our participation, as we do not track hackers’ locations. Kaspersky-Lab doesn’t provide any government agencies, nor other parties, with information on the location of people and doesn’t gather ‘identifying data from customers’ computers’ because it is technically impossible.”
Kaspersky-Lab had also declined all the charges by claiming that it is “unjustly accused without any hard evidence”
