Kaspersky has released a free version of its end-point security software. Rather than taking an ad-supported route, the security software company will be using data contributed by users to improve the machine learning systems across its entire product portfolio.
According to a post on the company’s blog, the new product, which has been in limited testing for a while, doesn’t include features such as VPN, online payment protection and parental controls. Those remain part of the paid product suite. But you still get file, email and web antivirus with automatic updates and other basic protection features.
With Kaspersky doing battle with Microsoft over allegations of Microsoft acting anti-competitively, this seems like a good way to increase their market penetration and counter Microsoft’s advantage with Defender already being part of Windows.
It’s a bold move. I’m at the RSA Conference in Singapore (as a guest of RSA) and one of the things that really stands out is that there’s very little focus on end-point. I’ve been to many security events and this is the first where end-point security vendors are barely represented. One expert I spoke with says end-point is being relegated to a bit player – a far cry from the days when it was key plank of security strategies.
Perhaps this is a way, not only of collecting more data, but of ensuring they stay a part of security conversations.
Comments
2 responses to “Kaspersky Releases Free Antivirus Software For Everyone”
Is this time limited? A quick look didn’t show anything.
From what I can tell – no time limit. It’s a subset of their full, commercial product but not time limited.
Some quick advice would be great. I currently use the free version of Avira; is the free version of Kaspersky better? Cheers to anyone who takes the time to reply.
I installed the Kaspersky free version yesterday, replacing Bitdefender (yes another, Free Version), and so far it performs better. It is not as taxing on the PC performance, as Avira (excellent software, but from my experience too heavy on the CPU and memory), and appears more proactive than Bitdefender.
Have you been happy with Avira’s performance so far? Are you using all of Avira’s free Antirus Suite features? Are you completely against a company collecting data about you?
I would say those are the three biggest things to consider if you are thinking about swapping from Avira to Kaspersky’s free antivirus. If you said no to either of the first two and the third questions then you might give Kaspersky a try, it should be less resource intensive than Avira’s full Suite.