Woburn, MA – September 21, 2022 — Kaspersky today announces the opening of two new Global Transparency Centers in Italy and the Netherlands. The centers include a new format providing customers and partners with the company’s most popular service: an overview of Kaspersky’s engineering and data processing practices.
This new format is introduced as a result of businesses showing
increased interest in having confidence in their technology providers, with more
than 70% of IT decision makers declaring a strong importance of having ongoing
assurance that the IT solutions they use are operating in a known and trusted
state.
The new centers are part of Kaspersky’s Global Transparency
Initiative (GTI) and aim to open the “black box” of technology, increasing customer
confidence in the company’s solutions. With the 2017 launch of the GTI,
Kaspersky became the first cybersecurity company to open its source-code for
external review. The initiative aims to engage the broader community in
validating and verifying the trustworthiness of Kaspersky’s products, internal
processes, and business operations.
The opening of the new Transparency Centers reflects the company’s ongoing commitment to enhance transparency and accountability for its customers and partners. Having added new facilities in Rome and Utrecht in addition to Madrid and Zurich, Kaspersky now has the biggest network of such centers in Europe.
Operating in the company’s offices, these new centers, open for Kaspersky partners, customers, and government cybersecurity authorities, serve exclusively for the blue piste level, the most sought-after option with Transparency Center visitors since the opening of the first facility in 2018. The blue piste represents a general overview of Kaspersky’s engineering and data processing practices, its products and services. During the visit, partners and customers will be met by a team of Kaspersky experts who will answer any questions regarding the company’s data processing practices and the functioning of Kaspersky’s solutions, together with a live demonstration of a source-code review.
“Our Global Transparency Initiative has been running for five years, and throughout that journey, we’ve constantly searched for more efficient mechanisms that help our partners and customers enhance trust and assurance in our solutions and services,” saidAndrey Efremov, Kaspersky’s chief business development officer. “The launch of new Transparency Centers, based on the company’s vast experience and engagement with businesses worldwide, confirms providing greater transparency about how our technology works and data is treated is critical. Our commitment to providing this transparency continues.”
With the latest addition of two new facilities, Kaspersky now operates nine Transparency Centers in Europe, APAC, North America and Latin America. Previously opened centers offer additional review options — the red and black piste, which vary in their depth and the level of technical skills required. The first stands for the review of the most critical parts of the source code, enabling a targeted analysis of a particular functionality[1], while the second represents the deepest and most comprehensive review of the most critical parts of Kaspersky’s source code.
To learn more about Kaspersky’s new Transparency Centers or request access, please visit the website.
The new edition of the Transparency report
Another pillar forming Kaspersky’s Global Transparency Initiative is the release of Kaspersky Transparency reports. These reports reveal information on requests received from government and law enforcement agencies, and users for their personal data. The latest report covers the first six months of 2022.
During the first half of 2022, Kaspersky received a total of 89 requests from governments and law enforcement agencies from eight countries (Brazil, China, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Russia, Singapore, and South Korea). The overwhelming majority (89%) of requests received were for non-personal technical information, i.e. information facilitating the conduct of investigations into cybercrimes, indicators of compromise (IoCs), information about modus operandi of cyberattackers, output of malware reverse engineering and other results of cyber forensic analysis. As many as 11% of requests asked for user data, with all of them having been rejected. The share of requests for non-personal technical data rose from 85% to 89%. The share of approved requests grew as well: out of all the requests received over H1 2022, 64% were granted. All other requests were rejected either for not meeting legal verification requirements or due to absence of required data.
In addition, as part of its Transparency reports, Kaspersky has been making public information about requests received from users for personal data related purposes including details on where a user’s data is stored, provision or removal of personal information. Kaspersky received 3,285 such requests in the first six months of 2022.
Kaspersky follows its commitment to updating such data every six months and publishes Transparency reports on a regular basis to ensure stakeholders have necessary information and can trust in its solutions. The reports also provide more information on the company’s approach to handling such requests and its principles. Previous Transparency reports can be found here.
About Kaspersky
Kaspersky is a global cybersecurity company founded in 1997. Kaspersky’s deep threat intelligence and security expertise is constantly transforming into innovative security solutions and services to protect businesses, critical infrastructure, governments and consumers around the globe. The company’s comprehensive security portfolio includes leading endpoint protection and a number of specialized security solutions and services to fight sophisticated and evolving digital threats. Over 400 million users are protected by Kaspersky technologies and we help 240,000 corporate clients protect what matters most to them. Learn more at usa.kaspersky.com.
Media Contact:
Cassandra Faro
Cassandra.Faro@Kaspersky.com
781-503-1812
[1] The code review can be run solely for consultation purposes and in compliance with the strictest access policy to rule out the possibility of any modifications.
