Kaspersky set to leave homeland to alleviate security fears

Vendor to move a 'good part' of its infrastructure to Switzerland, praising the country's data protection laws and 'two centuries of neutrality'

Kaspersky will move a "good part" of its infrastructure out of Russia to Switzerland in a bid to repair the damage caused by its tussle with the US government.

The vendor fell out with the US last year, when all government agencies were ordered to remove Kaspersky software.

The US government had expressed concerns over possible links between Kaspersky and Russian intelligence, which Kaspersky has always denied.

The UK government took a less hardline approach, but still warned that government agencies should not use Kaspersky products if they are processing "secret" data.

Kaspersky has now taken steps to mitigate the damage caused by these events by announcing plans to move a number of "core processes" out of Russia and to Zurich.

These processes include the storing of customer data and software assembly.

CEO Eugene Kaspersky said: "In a rapidly changing industry such as ours we have to adapt to the evolving needs of our clients, stakeholders and partners.

"Transparency is one such need, and that is why we've decided to redesign our infrastructure and move our data processing facilities to Switzerland.

"We believe such action will become a global trend for cybersecurity, and that a policy of trust will catch on across the industry as a key basic requirement."

On its website Kaspersky said it has selected Switzerland because it "has maintained its policy of neutrality for two centuries", and also because of its data protection legislation.

The Switzerland base is part of Kaspersky's Global Transparency Initiative, which will see the vendor open up the source code of its products for third-party analysis and audits.

A third-party organisation will also be "assessing the trustworthiness" of the Zurich facility once it is up and running.

By the end of 2019 the datacentre will hold all of the information of Kaspersky's customers from Europe, North America, Singapore, Australia, Japan and South Korea. The data of customers from other countries will be moved there over time.