The recent President Donald Trump open declaration that Kaspersky solutions should not be used in any governmental offices, must have been the straw the broke the camels back. After months of counter discussion between senior personals from the Homeland Security and Kaspersky on whether the security products sold were stealing high level information and passing it to Russian official. The US President goes on record to make the announcement and Kaspersky which denies all allegation and does not see itself compelled enough to commit such activities as it does not make business sense, is not cowering away this time.
Kaspersky Lab has now filed an appeal under the Administrative Procedure Act to enforce its constitutional due process rights and challenge the Binding Operational Directive prohibiting the use of the company’s products and solutions by U.S. government agencies. The company asserts that the Department of Homeland Security’s decision is unconstitutional and relied on subjective, non-technical public sources such as uncorroborated and often anonymously sourced media reports, related claims, and rumors. Furthermore, it claims the department has failed to provide the company adequate due process to rebut the unsubstantiated allegations underlying the Directive and has not provided any evidence of wrongdoing by the company.
To take on the US Government and more so the Trump will be an uphill battle for Eugene and this team, but the company has a bigger thing at stake…its reputation. A security company accused of stealing information is akin to a bank robbing the money deposited in its vaults. The major issue here is ‘trust’ and Eugene does not want to lose it. Nevertheless, Kaspersky asserts there is no valid proof to show there is any truth to this allegation, in fact the Moscow based company went on to the extent of opening up its source codes for the department to scrutinise. Something no other software company will be willing to do.
“Because Kaspersky Lab has not been provided a fair opportunity in regards to the allegations and no technical evidence has been produced to validate DHS’s actions, it is in the company’s interests to defend itself in this matter. Regardless of the DHS decision, we will continue to do what really matters: make the world safer from cybercrime,” said Eugene Kaspersky, CEO of Kaspersky Lab.
In its efforts to clear its name and show its clientele how transparent the company is, Kasperky launched Global Transparency Initiative on October 23, 2017, which allows independent review of the company’s source code, software updates and threat detection rules to verify the integrity of the company’s solutions and processes. A first by any security company, there will be two more such centres after Europe with Asia and US.
