Kaspersky Unveils a Slew of Security Products
Applications are designed to protect businesses, home users, and mobile devices.Scarlet Pruitt, IDG News Service
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HANOVER, GERMANY-- Underscoring the need to secure information whether it is on a handheld device or on a server, Kaspersky Lab released a slew of security products at the CeBIT technology fair here this week.
The Russian security company raised the curtain on four new products for business users, including Guard@Net 5.0, a beta version of a virtual security appliance for Linux environments, and its SMTP-Gateway 5.0 for Linux/Unix, which filters e-mail and acts as a functional router for Linux, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD systems.
On the Microsoft Windows front, the company introduced Kaspersky Anti-Virus 5.5 for Microsoft ISA Server 2000 Enterprise Edition and Anti-Virus 6.0 for Microsoft Exchange Server. Anti-Virus 6.0 has been updated to automate functions such as detecting virus epidemics, the company says.
For home users, Kaspersky offered another quartet of products, two for PCs and two for mobile devices.
Kaspersky's Personal Security Suite 1.0 offers home users a firewall and anti-spam and antivirus protection for their PCs; another new product, Lab News Agent 1.0, is a stand-alone application that provides a news ticker of information on virus attacks, products, and business news. The News Agent is in beta testing and available for free, the company says.
Going Mobile
For users on the go, Kaspersky is offering Anti-Virus for Symbian OS protection for mobile phones running the Symbian operating system. The beta product allows users to download virus signatures to their mobile phones from Kaspersky's Web site, which then scan the phone for malicious code.
The company is also offering Anti-Virus for PDAs, an update of a previous product that now protects Pocket PC devices when files are being copied from another device. It can also be used on smart phones running Microsoft's Smartphone 2002 and Windows Mobile 2003 software.
The release of Kaspersky's mobile security products is timely given that the first virus that spreads via Mobile Messaging Service on Symbian-based smart phones was detected earlier this week, says Andrey Nikishin, head of market research and strategic development at Kaspersky.
"Smart phones represent only 1 percent of the market now, but in two years it could be 50 percent, so the potential for danger is high," Nikishin says.
While the CeBIT security hall is crammed with other providers that offer a range of antivirus options, Kaspersky's General Manager for Germany, Andreas Lamm, says that his company's products stand out because of the frequency and breath of their product updates.
"The most important thing is detection, and you can't have good protection if you don't have a good reaction time," Lamm says.
More to Come
The company is planning a host of new and updated products for release later this year, including an integrated security product for enterprise users due out in the third quarter that includes antivirus, anti-spam, intrusion protection, privacy controls, and "proactive defense," among other features. Proactive defense is a term the company uses for technology that identifies possible malicious code from its behavior and takes steps to erase any damage it might have done while it's still analyzing the code, by deleting newly created files or restoring deleted keys, for example.
"As far as I know this is the most complex system we've had," Nikishin says of the forthcoming enterprise security product.
Kaspersky is also planning a new desktop security product for the third quarter or fourth quarter of the year that includes proactive defense.
Also on the agenda is a beta version of the company's Anti-Spam 3.0 product, due out in a month. It's two to three times faster at scanning than previous versions and features a new interface, Nikishin says.