Kaspersky Lab Plans for Swiss Data Center

Kaspersky Lab has plans to set up a data center in Switzerland with the aim to address Western government worries, according to reports.

Kaspersky Lab plans to open a data center in Switzerland.

The concerns particularly targeted Russia as exploitive of anti-virus software, which the country allegedly uses to spy on customers. The Moscow-based company aims to answer the United States, Great Britain, and Lithuania, who all attempted to stop using the company’s products. The information regarding the plan has been reportedly confirmed by a person familiar with the matter.

This is the latest move by Kaspersky, a global market leader in anti-virus software, to disprove allegations by the American government and others. The accusations say that the company spies on its customers for the Russian intelligence.

Last year, the US ordered the civilian government agencies to remove Kaspersky software from all of their products. As a result, Kaspersky filed a lawsuit against the US ban, in a move to deny the accusations.

The source with direct knowledge on the matter said that the allegations served as the “trigger” for the setting up of the Switzerland-based data center, although it was not the only factor for the plan.

Further, the source said, “This is not just a PR stunt. We are really changing our R&D infrastructure.”

“To further deliver on the promises of our Global Transparency Initiative, we are finalizing plans for the opening of the company’s first transparency center this year, which will be located in Europe,” said Kaspersky Lab in a statement.

“We understand that during a time of geopolitical tension, mirrored by an increasingly complex cyber-threat landscape, people may have questions and we want to address them,” it added.

In October, the company launched a campaign to squash suspicions about the possible collusion with the Russian government. In the campaign, Kaspersky promised to have independent experts scrutinize its software to find possible vulnerabilities, as well as “back doors” that the government could exploit to spy on its customers.

During that time, the company also stated that it would open “transparency centers” in Asia, Europe, and the United States but did not provide further details. In the documents seen by reporters, the Swiss facility is tagged as the “Swiss Transparency Centre.”

Further Information on the Swiss Facility

Kaspersky Lab denies accusations of collusion with the Russian government

The source, who requested anonymity, said that the Swiss facility will start operating “within weeks” and will be completed by the early part of 2020, adding that the company’s CEO and founder Eugene Kaspersky approved of the plan. The chief executive owns a majority of the privately-held company.

The business is set to announce the plans in public in the coming months, the source said.

Western security officials said that Russia’s FSB Federal Security Service influences the Kaspesky management decisions. The FSB Federal Security Service is the successor to the Soviet-era KGB.

The Swiss center will collect and analyze files that are marked suspicious on the computers of tens of millions of Kaspersky customers in the United States and the European Union. Meanwhile, the data from other customers will still be sent to the data center located in Moscow for review and analysis.

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