Latest Kaspersky products address growing threat to online privacy

KIS 2016 and KAS 2016 are the company’s two main products for consumers.

KIS 2016 comes with the latest key features to address online privacy, which is the most significant concern of Internet users, including Private Browsing and System Change Control, said Jimmy Fong, channel sales director of Kaspersky Lab Southeast Asia.

According to the "Consumer |IT Security Risks Survey 2015", |67 per cent of the Internet users surveyed use several devices to go online.

Although for 70 per cent the PC continues to dominate Internet access at home, for 23 per cent online access is mainly through a mobile device.

Consumers’ primary online activities include e-mail, online shopping, news, social media, banking and entertainment such as films and gaming, although devices are also used for payment transactions, education – and online dating.

The study explored the potential risks facing the personal data increasingly stored on Internet-enabled devices. It found that 88 per cent of respondents store some form of private or personal information on their digital devices.

Around half (48 per cent) store passwords or account login details, and 28 per cent store financial data – information that could be of immense value to criminals.

The study was conducted online for Kaspersky by B2B International in June, with 12,355 people aged 16 and over from 26 countries surveyed.

Personal privacy is everybody’s inalienable right, whether it is in the real or the virtual world, Fong said, adding that Kaspersky Lab’s goal is to protect people’s personal files and privacy from cyber-criminals and other "curious residents" of the Internet.

KIS 2016’s new Private Browsing feature is designed to prevent users from being tracked by their browsing habits.

It removes such data as a user’s browser activities, their locations and search history, from the Internet traffic and reports any blocking requests to the user via a dedicated plug-in.

"Our products do more than preventing users from being identified via cookie files, or warning sites that it does not wish to transmit data that cloud-track users, as it actually guarantees that this data will not leave the device," said Fong.

The System Change Control feature, meanwhile, detects any process attempting to introduce such changes, reports that to the user and asks for the process to be expressly permitted or blocked.

In addition, the 2016 version of Kaspersky Lab’s consumer security products provides a number of enhancements to ensure protection for users, including Safe Money, Application Control, Trusted Application Mode, and Two-Way Firewall.

He said these features would be more effective if users followed safer Internet practices, including: protecting their devices and online accounts with strong passwords; avoiding downloading files from untrusted sources; and running regular scans for cyber-threats on their computers.

According to a "Kaspersky Security Network" report, Thailand ranks 33 of 250 countries and states worldwide for cyber-attacks.

The Kingdom has become one of the most targeted countries by hackers, resulting from its high level of pirated-software installation, online banking transactions, as well as the proliferation of wireless devices and social networks.

"Since the cyber-threats landscape is a constantly evolving subject, we strongly recommend users to regularly update their security products to the latest version in order to ensure the latest protection advancements are in place," said the sales director.