In the wake of reports from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in America who is cautioning companies to be wary of Kaspersky Labs after finding evidence the organisation is in cohorts with Moscow in gathering classified information, should everyone else be concerned?

The FBI has gone to the extent instructing government agencies to stop using the Kaspersky Lab products claiming the company can’t be trusted. Denying the allegation, CEO Eugene Kaspersky offered up its source code to to clear his firms name. But things continue to be dire for the anti-virus provider, a draft senate bill was proposed to bar the Defense Department from doing business with the company.  This could only mean respite is nowhere near.

So is US paranoid or should other governments start to worry? We have been using the security solution for decades if what the FBI say is true, then whole load of information has already left the country.While we would like to think Malaysia does not fall into the radar of Russian intelligence, but the possibility of third party software extracting data from computers and servers is well recorded. And when a cyberattack on the power grid brought Ukraine to its knees, the FBI went on to advise energy sectors on threat assessments including from Kaspersky. There is no concrete proof of any links between any of the incidents and it’s a know fact that professional hackers are capable to find any vulnerabilities in the system even if there’s top level security solution in place. But we should not be paranoid, Malaysians happily part with data whenever they agree to terms and condition, and inadvertently compromise security to the system. And so far hackers have not taken over the country.

For now we can just sit back relax and watch how the whole event unravels, we have nothing to fear as we never had any issues with Moscow, we are not a super power, we don’t have ambition to rule the world and we are too small for Putin.