Press Release

Kaspersky Internet Security Comes Loaded with Latest Technologies to Protect Personal Data and Real Money

Woburn, MA – August 23, 2012 - It’s no secret: most cybercriminals don’t want online fame, they want your money. Kaspersky Lab research shows that each day, more than 1,400 new pieces of banking malware are created. These malicious programs are designed specifically to hijack your online purchases, snoop on credit card transactions, and redirect your web browser to fraudulent sites. More than $1.2 trillion will be exchanged over the Internet in 2012, and stealing even a small percentage can mean a big pay-day for cybercriminals.

Today, Kaspersky Lab, a leading developer of secure content and threat management solutions, announced new versions of Kaspersky Internet Security and Kaspersky Anti-Virus. Both products feature our strongest protection ever against modern threats and significant improvements to performance and simplicity, including a faster installation, less drain on computer resources and battery life, and real-time protection against viruses, spyware, and more.

A new offering found in Kaspersky Internet Security is Safe Money, Kaspersky Lab’s unique technology designed to protect the user’s money when shopping and banking online. To keep your cash safe, Kaspersky Internet Security’s Safe Money will:

1. Automatically activate when visiting most common payment services (PayPal, etc.), banking websites, and you can easily add your own bank or shopping websites to the list.
2. Isolate your payment operations in a special web browser to ensure your transactions aren’t monitored.
3. Verify the authenticity of the banking or payment website itself, to ensure the site isn't compromised by malware, or a fake website designed to look authentic.
4. Evaluate the security status of your computer, and warn about any existing threats that should be addressed prior to making payments.
5. Provide an onscreen Virtual Keyboard when entering your credit card or payment information so you can enter your information with mouse-clicks. This will activate a special program to prevent malware from logging any keystrokes on your physical keyboard.

In July, this new Safe Money technology was evaluated against 15 real-world attack styles used by malware to steal your banking information. Tested by independent research lab Matousec, Kaspersky Internet Security successfully blocked all 15 banking attacks. Most other popular security products failed to block even half of the attacks. The full test results are available online.

Watching for Security Flaws in Your Apps and Programs
Another new and unique technology added to both Kaspersky Internet Security and Kaspersky Anti-Virus is called Automatic Exploit Prevention. An easy way for a cybercriminal to gain control of your PC is to take advantage of a security flaw in one of the dozens of programs and applications you use every day. When cybercriminals discover an unpatched security flaw in a popular program - such as Adobe Acrobat, Java or Microsoft Internet Explorer, for example – they may race to infect as many victims as they can before the vendor fixes the flaw. Whenever you ignore a pop-up window telling you to download the latest updates for a program, you’re unwittingly keeping this window of vulnerability open even longer. Now, Kaspersky Lab will not only alert you when out-of-date programs are running on your machine, but Automatic Exploit Prevention will protect you from these vulnerabilities until you are able to update them.

Kaspersky Lab’s technology watches over the programs installed on your PC and knows how these programs are supposed to act. If the program tries to perform unusual or unauthorized activities, Automatic Exploit Prevent blocks the abnormal action while still allowing the program to perform its normal operations. This means Kaspersky Internet Security and Kaspersky Anti-Virus will keep you safe without inconveniencing you by shutting off the applications you use every day. It happens more often than you think – from January through March 2012, Kaspersky Lab detected more than 1 million malicious programs designed to exploit vulnerabilities in commonly-used software.

Kaspersky Lab: 15 Years of Award-Winning Security for Your Computer
In 2012, Kaspersky Lab celebrated its 15th anniversary of security research and technological innovation. For years, Kaspersky Lab has steadily refined and improved its cornerstone products - Kaspersky Anti-Virus for essential protection needed to secure a PC, and Kaspersky Internet Security for advanced protection to confidently browse online. Both products work behind the scenes to deliver the fastest and most trusted virus and spyware protection in the world. Kaspersky Lab’s key improvements to both products, designed to protect customers in 2013 and beyond, include:

• A new antivirus engine with better detection rates for the entire scope of emerging cyber-threats
• New anti-phishing technology that features improved detection of imposter websites that try to steal passwords and other valuable data
• A simplified user interface that provides faster installation and easier day-to-day use of the product
• Improved performance, to keep you safe without slowing you down
• More efficient power consumption, to ensure you get the most battery life from your laptop

In addition, both Kaspersky Anti-Virus and Kaspersky Internet Security are Windows 8 Ready, and will work seamlessly on the new Microsoft operating system. The new versions of Kaspersky Internet Security and Kaspersky Anti-Virus are included in Kaspersky ONE, a Universal Security product that protects PCs, Macs, smartphones¹ and Android tablets using a single activation code. No matter what devices you use to get online, all you need is Kaspersky ONE.

Pricing and Availability
Kaspersky Internet Security and Kaspersky Anti-Virus are available for purchase now on Kaspersky Lab’s online store, and wherever quality software is sold in the U.S. and Canada. Current customers may upgrade free of charge from Kaspersky Internet Security 2012 and Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2012 to the new products for the remainder of their existing license period. A standard subscription – 3-user licenses for a 1-year period – is $79.95 for Kaspersky Internet Security and $59.95 for Kaspersky Anti-Virus.

About Kaspersky Lab
Kaspersky Lab is the world’s largest privately held vendor of endpoint protection solutions. The company is ranked among the world’s top four vendors of security solutions for endpoint users*. Throughout its 15-year history Kaspersky Lab has remained an innovator in IT security and provides effective digital security solutions for consumers, SMBs and Enterprises. The company currently operates in almost 200 countries and territories across the globe, providing protection for more than 300 million users worldwide. Learn more at www.kaspersky.com.

*The company was rated fourth in the IDC rating Worldwide Endpoint Security Revenue by Vendor, 2010. The rating was published in the IDC report Worldwide IT Security Products 2011-2015 Forecast and 2010 Vendor Shares – December 2011. The report ranked software vendors according to earnings from sales of endpoint security solutions in 2010.

For the latest in-depth information on security threat issues and trends, please visit http://www.securelist.com/. Follow @Securelist on Twitter. For the most up-to-date world security news, visit http://www.threatpost.com/.

¹ Blackberry®, Symbian®, Android®, and Windows Mobile® smartphones are supported, see online system requirements for details