Kaspersky Labs has confirmed plans to end operating in the US. In a statement published yesterday, the Russia-based cybersecurity firm said that it would cut all of its positions in the country and made purchases of its antivirus products “unavailable for US customers” as of Monday. The decision follows the announcement of plans by the Biden administration last month to impose such a ban, arguing that the Russian state’s influence over Kaspersky constituted a national security risk.
“Russia has shown it has the capacity and… the intent to exploit Russian companies like Kaspersky to collect and weaponise the personal information of Americans,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told journalists in June. “That is why we are compelled to take the action that we are taking today.” Kaspersky has consistently denied that the Russian state has any influence over its operations or that its software constitutes a threat to citizens or governments.
Pressure on Kaspersky Labs growing since 2017
Founded in 1997, Kaspersky Lab quickly became one of the world’s pre-eminent antivirus software suppliers. Headquartered in Moscow, the company claims to have 400 million customers, among them 220,000 corporate clients.
Recent years, however, have seen Western governments grow increasingly hostile to Kaspersky Labs given its links to the Russian state. As early as 2017, the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre warned government departments to refrain from using Kaspersky’s antivirus products for fear that they contained a backdoor used by the Russian intelligence services. The same year also saw US President Trump ban the use of the firm’s software by the federal government.
Russian cybersecurity firm denies wrongdoing
This hostility has only grown since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The following month, Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) recommended customers choose alternatives to Kaspersky’s products – rhetoric the company told BBC News had been “made on political grounds.” In June of this year, meanwhile, 12 executives from the company were sanctioned by the US treasury for “operating in the technology sector of the Russian Federation economy,” while its Russian and UK divisions were added to the department’s entities list.
For its part, Kaspersky has strenuously and consistently denied that Russia’s intelligence services can view its customers’ data. The company, it said last month in response to news of the US Treasury’s sanctions, “does not engage in activities which threaten US national security and, in fact, has made significant contributions with its reporting and protection from a variety of threat actors that targeted US interests and allies,” adding at the time that it intended to “pursue all legally available options to preserve its current operations and relationships.”
