Over the course of the two-day conference, some of the company’s researchers were happy to talk about the cloud hanging over the company. “I cannot predict the longer term, but it’s business as usual this year,” Eugene Kaspersky said. (Late last year, the company closed down one of its offices in the US.) In our written correspondence, he dismissed concerns over the company’s future, saying the company’s financial results in 2017 were “positive,” and that it remains operating in the US and the West. It was perhaps a strategic move intended to send the message that, despite all the fuss in the news, Kaspersky Lab is trucking along.Įugene Kaspersky declined to talk to me during SAS, but agreed to answer follow-up questions via email afterward. He seemed reticent to address the controversy between his company and the US government. Kaspersky, whose full name is Yevgeny Valentinovich Kaspersky, graduated from a KGB school before becoming a cybersecurity entrepreneur. I flew to the Caribbean coast of Mexico to find out. So what is Kaspersky Lab, really? Is the 20-year-old company behind one of the most popular antivirus programs in the world an arm of Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin? Or is the self-proclaimed “ company to save the world” a victim of US government protectionist propaganda? Is SAS simply a networking event with an open bar where the company shows off the latest work from its researchers, who are some of the most well-respected malware hunters in the world? Or is it a chance for the company to expose highly sensitive, ongoing American intelligence operations, and-as some in the cybersecurity world told me-perhaps a chance for spies to keep tabs on attendees? Its team of researchers is widely respected by its peers for its ability to find sophisticated government malware-regardless of where it’s from-and its software is considered one of the best to catch malware on your computer. The company’s most recent move to show it’s independent from the Russian government has been to announce a new data center in Switzerland that will store information from customers in US, Europe, Japan, Korea, Singapore and Australia.Īt the same time, Kaspersky Lab continues to have a good reputation in the industry. Meanwhile, several news stories alleged that the company’s software helped Russian intelligence services steal highly classified documents from a US National Security Agency contractor. Best Buy stopped sales of the software, some of Kaspersky Lab’s financial customers dropped it, and more recently, Twitter banned the company from advertising on its platform. The government bans have also spilled over to the private sector. The British and Dutch governments has since followed suit. First, on the heels of the congressional inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 American presidential elections, the US government proposed and eventually passed a federal ban and purge on the use of Kaspersky Lab software across all government agencies. Kaspersky Lab has been mired in an ongoing crisis. It’s an unintentionally appropriate way for Kaspersky Lab to open its biggest event, since many attendees and the cyber security world at large have the same question for the company.
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