Kaspersky Anti - Virus

Kaspersky Lab is a computer security company, co-founded by Natalia Kaspersky and Eugene Kaspersky in 1997, offering antivirus, anti-spyware, anti-spam, and anti-intrusion products. Kaspersky Lab is a privately held company headquartered in Moscow, Russia with regional offices in the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Japan, China, Korea and the USA.

In 2005, Red Herring magazine listed Kaspersky among "Red Herring 100 Europe", a selection of the 100 private companies in Europe and Israel that play a leading role in innovation and technology.

According to AV-Comparatives, Kaspersky Anti-Virus (formerly known as AntiViral Toolkit Pro) rates highly amongst virus scanners in terms of detection rates. In 2006 Kaspersky Anti-Virus was ranked second, and was the recipient of the TopTenReviews Gold Award. In addition, Kaspersky has passed all Virus Bulletin comparative tests since August 2003. According to PC World magazine, Kaspersky antivirus software provides the fastest updates for new virus and security threats in the industry.

Kaspersky Anti-Virus engine also powers products or solutions by other security vendors, such as Check Point, Bluecoat, Juniper Networks, Sybari (now acquired by Microsoft), Netintelligence, GFI Software, F-Secure, Borderware, FrontBridge, G-Data, Netasq, and others. Altogether, more than 120 companies are licensing technology from Kaspersky, which makes it one of the most widely used antivirus engines in the industry.

Media claims

In early 2005, Kaspersky Labs revealed that it was contacted by "a user asking how to disinfect the onboard computers of several Lexus cars... The user said that the infection occurred via a mobile phone".

On 5 April 2007, Kaspersky Labs claimed to have found a virus that infects Apple's popular iPod music player. The press release stated: "It should be stressed that in order for the virus to function, Linux has to be installed on the iPod." Kaspersky Internet Security 7 includes a built in option called "Roll-back" technology. When an infection is detected, it will give you the option to "Roll-back", which will take your computer back right before the infection was detected, so its as if it never touched your computer. Having this option makes it be able to get rid of threats other software can't. An example being Smitfraud-C., which was an epidemic for most companies.

Product

The current line of Kaspersky products consists of Kaspersky Internet Security 7 and Kaspersky Anti-Virus 7, released on August 1, 2007.

Kaspersky products are widely used in Eastern Europe and Asia, but have not been strongly marketed in North America and Western Europe. However, US-based magazine PC World recently awarded Kaspersky Anti-Virus 6 the Editor's Choice in its 2007 anti-virus comparative (partnered with AV-Test.org), a move which will likely result in more widespread use in the Western Hemisphere. For example, it is now being marketed by Sam's Club in tandem with the Symantec Norton product line, which has been more popular in the USA.

The latest line of Kaspersky products is certified for Windows Vista.

Kaspersky Anti-Virus

Kaspersky Anti-Virus (Russian: Антивирус Касперского; formerly known as AntiViral Toolkit Pro) is an antivirus program developed by Kaspersky Lab. It is designed to protect users from malware and is designed for computers running Microsoft Windows.


Features

Kaspersky Anti-Virus has a variety of features, including:

• protection, detection and removal of viruses, trojans, worms, spyware, adware and keyloggers
• heuristics analyzer for detecting unknown threats (included in version 7)
• detection and removal of rootkits
• protection from viruses when using ICQ and other IM clients
• real-time scanning of e-mail, internet traffic and files
• self-defense of the program to prevent it from being stopped or disabled
• tools for creating a rescue disk
• free technical support and community support via dedicated user forum

The program is well known for its high detection rates. According to AV-Comparatives, Kaspersky Anti-Virus rates highly amongst virus scanners in terms of detection rates. Since 2003, the program has also passed all Virus Bulletin tests. In addition, PC World recently awarded Kaspersky Anti-Virus 6 the Editor's Choice in its 2007 anti-virus comparative.

Kaspersky Anti Virus 7.0 was "A-listed" by the prestigious UK PC journal PC Pro in late 2007, where it scored very highly for detection and removal of malware. PC Pro attribute this to “a combination of the software’s heuristic scanning and uncompromising approach to database updates. While many packages check for new virus signatures on a daily basis, Kaspersky runs to an hourly schedule, improving your PC’s chances of being immunized before an infection reaches it.”

Kaspersky Anti-Virus generally has a fast response rate, being able to provide signatures for new viruses in zero to two hours after outbreak on average.