Tuesday, 26 April 2005 16:20 EST

Kaspersky Anti-Virus to protect email accounts and help improve productivity

Stand 550, Infosecurity Europe, Olympia 26th April 2005, Kaspersky Lab announced today that it has licensed its award winning anti-virus technology to Business Serve plc, one of the UK’s leading converged communications providers, offering both traditional ISP products and telecommunications services including Voice over Internet Protocol (“VoIP”). Business Serve will be using the licence to provide secure email capabilities as a value-add service to its 40,000 business customers.

“Kaspersky Lab’s superior technology and competitive licensing model will enable us to continue to offer our customers the very best protection against email borne malware,” commented Martin Molz, Business Serve’s Chief Operating Officer. “Removing messages that contain malware from email accounts before they are downloaded doesn’t just help security; it also reduces bandwidth requirements and helps to increase user productivity because there is less email to process. This may not be an issue for some smaller businesses, but for those that have several hundred email boxes it can add a considerable overhead.”

Just a few days ago Kaspersky Lab announced that Bagle.bn had been widely spammed to email users; in fact the author of Bagle has been particularly active since the beginning of 2005, releasing a new malicious program every few days. Fortunately, Bagle.bn is unable to self-replicate. However, this does not mean that the author will not use spammer technologies to mass mail additional copies of the worm.

Svetlana Ivanova, Managing Director of Kaspersky Lab UK says, “Even if users are wise enough to hit the delete key, this type of persistent attack can be extremely annoying for business users who rely heavily on email as a method of communication. We are pleased to welcome Business Serve as a customer of Kaspersky’s and hope that the relationship will expand further in the future.”

About Kaspersky Lab
Kaspersky Lab develops, produces and distributes information security solutions that protect customers from IT threats and allow enterprises to manage risk. Kaspersky Lab provides products that protect information from viruses, spyware, hackers and spam for home users and corporate networks alike. For many years now the company has waged a battle against malicious programs, and in doing so has gained unique knowledge and skills that have led to Kaspersky Lab becoming a technology leader and acknowledged expert in the development of malware defences. Today, its products protect more than 75 million users worldwide.