Kaspersky banned in the US: can you use it at home?
Short answer: yes. If you have a licensed copy of Kaspersky antivirus software, you can continue using it at home. The suite, after all, is one of the most popular antivirus suites in the world, it's been around for ages, and, in a free market, this sort of popularity cannot be bought no matter how much money you pump into marketing. It's either you deliver on the promise or not, and if you do, here's your well-earned following. Moreover, businesses may carry on with Kaspersky, too. But there's a caveat.
US Commerce Department prohibits Kaspersky
The exact wording is as follows:
Today, the Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) announced a Final Determination prohibiting Kaspersky Lab, Inc., the U.S. subsidiary of a Russia-based anti-virus software and cybersecurity company, from directly or indirectly providing anti-virus software and cybersecurity products or services in the United States or to U.S. persons.
You can read the full announcement here. Essentially, this means that you won’t be able to buy new licenses for this antivirus software, whether you like it or not.
The reasons, if you’re interested, are security concerns. The Biden-Harris administration claims that Kaspersky has close ties with the Kremlin, and its software can do all sorts of things with data from the computers it’s installed on. Truth be told, antivirus programs do have pretty much unrestricted access to everything. Up to 2022, Kaspersky AV kit has been one of the world’s most popular suites in its category, praised by pretty much all media covering the respective domain for being highly effective, fast to react to threats, and undemanding in terms of resources.
The US has been probing and banning Kaspersky since 2017, when the Department of Homeland Security told all federal networks to stop using the company’s flagship antivirus product. Now, with the decision labeled as Final Determination, the cycle seems to have come to an end.
When will Kaspersky stop updating in the US?
This is probably the most important question for those who like the software and/or cannot stop using it right away for business reasons. We’ll cite the announcement one more time here:
In order to minimize disruption to U.S. consumers and businesses and to give them time to find suitable alternatives, the Department’s determination will allow Kaspersky to continue certain operations in the United States—including providing anti-virus signature updates and codebase updates—until 12:00AM Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) on September 29, 2024.
This means that your copy of Kaspersky Antivirus Kit will keep you duly protected up to the end of September 2024. From then on, if nothing changes (unlikely), US users of this software will not be able to download neither signature nor engine updates.
If you need an alternative to Kaspersky, browse the respective section of Software Informer's database:
