Kaspersky Labs—a Russia-based cybersecurity company has closed its US operations. Its website visitors in the US are greeted by a notice that says “purchase unavailable for US customers.”
The move has been predicted for quite some time as cybersecurity concerns grow in the US, especially under the escalating geopolitical tensions between the US and Russia in light of the Ukraine war.
Tensions escalated last month when US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo announced the prospective ban on Kaspersky product sales in the US.
“We are announcing that after an extremely thorough investigation, we are taking action … which will prohibit Kaspersky Lab and all of its affiliates, subsidiaries and parent company from providing cyber security and anti-virus software anywhere in the United States,” Raimondo informed reporters.
The US Government also placed sanctions on many senior Kaspersky leaders, including its chief operations officer, chief business development officer, and legal officer among others.
As per the new sanctions, all Kasperesky’s updates, licenses, sales and resale of Kaspersky products will be blocked by the end of September. All its US-based positions will be eliminated. Users can continue using its already bought versions but will be unable to install any upgrades.
Kaspersky Labs was founded in 1997 by Eugene Kaspersky. It quickly grew to become one of the largest cybersecurity services providers, alongside homegrown US companies like McAfee and Symantec.
The company’s cybersecurity analysts are known to be the best in the world, analyzing cybersecurity threats from governments like Russia, Israel and the US and also from independent sources.
The company denied any connection with the Russian state operations and stated that it is a victim of the growing tensions between the West and Russia.
“Kaspersky 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. The company intends to pursue all legally available options to preserve its current operations and relationships.”, earlier the lab had said, responding to the ruling.
