Includes Information from PC WORLD: March 28, 2022
Antimalware provider Kaspersky Lab has been blacklisted by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, adding its name alongside Huawei and ZTE as companies that are deemed a threat to national security.
The FCC maintains a list of companies which are “deemed to pose an unacceptable risk to national security or the security and safety of United States persons,” and added Kaspersky to the list on Friday. Officially, the list now includes China Mobile International USA Inc., China Telecom (Americas) Corp, and AO Kaspersky Labs, as well as their subsidiaries.
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr said in a statement that adding those companies to the list “will help secure our networks from threats posed by Chinese and Russian state backed entities.” If a company is on the restricted list, it can’t receive federal subsidies, Bloomberg reported. The U.S. federal government banned the use of Kaspersky software in federal information systems in 2017 because of concerns about Kaspersky’s links to the Russian government.
History of Kaspersky
Kaspersky is a multinational Russian cybersecurity company. The company has been accused of working with the Russian FSB (Federal Security Service, successor of the KGB). On September 13, 2017, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security banned Kaspersky antivirus and cybersecurity products from all United States government departments and agencies due to the national security risk.
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