Kaspersky Antivirus Review

Company Background: Security Concerns?

Before we dive into the software itself, let’s talk about the company that made it: Kaspersky Labs. Here’s the thing: Kaspersky Labs is one of the most controversial antivirus brands today. Let’s unpack everything that happened from the very beginning.

Eugene Kaspersky – a Russian cybersecurity expert – along with two others, started developing the AntiVirus Toolkit Pro (AVP) software in 1989. After eight years, they founded Kaspersky Lab and later renamed the AVP software to Kaspersky. And even then, the software was hailed for its innovative features. For example, it was the first software to quarantine malware – an antivirus feature that has become widely-used since.

Its roots in Russia, however, contributed to the controversies surrounding Kaspersky. Allegations surfaced that it has ties to the Russian government, and as tensions between the U.S. and Russia rose, Kaspersky got caught up in them. Unfortunately, the allegations made against it were not entirely baseless.

Kaspersky’s Alleged Russian Ties

Rumors about Kaspersky started spreading back in 2012 when Bloomberg pointed out a pattern of new hires with connections to the Russian military establishment.1 In 2017, the U.S Department of Homeland Security banned the use of Kaspersky software by any federal agency, and Britain followed suit shortly after.2 Just recently, Canada also imposed a ban on Kaspersky software, making it illegal to install it on government computers and government-issued phones.

Aside from governments, Kaspersky is facing backlash from private companies. Twitter (now X) has banned Kaspersky Lab from advertising on the site, and Best Buy even stopped selling the company’s products.3 And the U.S argues that Kaspersky hacked into an NSA contractor’s laptop through its software back in 2015.4

Kaspersky has denied those allegations and in response, it moved its data centers from Russia to Switzerland. The relocation was finished in 2020.

Exposure of User’s Browsing Data

The allegations against Kaspersky are not all political. Some arose because of technical and product concerns.

In 2019, journalists pointed out that the way Kaspersky protects users online, by injecting a snippet of code into URLs, could allow other companies to track a computer’s browser traffic for advertising purposes.5 We don’t think this is a reason to shy away from Kaspersky, though—advertisers work hard to find our data wherever they can. And more importantly, Kaspersky updated its code so that individual computers can’t be tracked. If it still makes you nervous, you can adjust your settings to opt out of the code insertion.

More Allegations About Kaspersky’s Russian Ties

In April 2022, The German Federal Office for Information Security, known as BSI, urged the public to avoid using Kaspersky due to its ties to the Russian government. The BSI alleges that the firm could be implicated in hacking incidents related to Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Around the same time, the United States Federal Communications Commission blacklisted Kaspersky from buying services, parts, and components from U.S. companies. The use of Kaspersky products, however, remains legal in the United States except on government computers.

Canada followed suit just recently. Just like in the U.S., government-issued computers are not allowed to use Kaspersky products in Canada. The same goes for government-issued phones, citing “unacceptable risk to privacy and security” as the main reason for the ban.

Kaspersky responded with a statement reiterating its commitment to maintain the integrity and trustworthiness of its products. Kaspersky also reassured that data from non-Russian clients are sent to its Switzerland servers, a move the company made in 2018 after the first series of allegations about its ties to the Russian government.

Kaspersky Banned in the United States

Despite Kaspersky’s repeated reassurance that it has no ties with the Russian government, the U.S. government has announced plans to ban Kaspersky completely. This comes after an investigation by the Bureau of Industry and Services noted that Kaspersky poses “unacceptable risks to the United States’ national security and the security and safety of its people.”

Starting July 20, 2024, Kaspersky and its partners will no longer be able to sell and license antivirus software in the U.S. That also means current users will no longer receive critical malware database updates, and without those, they’d be more susceptible to new types of attacks. By September 29, 2024, all resellers will no longer be able to sell Kaspersky software.

Kaspersky responded by saying that the company “has implemented significant transparency measures that are unmatched by any of its cybersecurity industry peers to demonstrate its enduring commitment to integrity and trustworthiness.” It also stated that “the Department of Commerce’s decision [to ban Kaspersky] unfairly ignores the evidence.”

What Malware Did Kaspersky Find?

Setting aside those allegations and concerns, the Kaspersky antivirus software itself has a strong reputation for being reliable at detecting potential threats. After all, with all the allegations about the company, Kaspersky wouldn’t have lasted as long as it has if it’s not good at doing its job.

Filled with curiosity, we signed up for a Kaspersky subscription to test exactly what makes Kaspersky a popular choice one last time. And just to clarify, we performed these tests in June 2024, a month before the ban was set to take place. We wanted to see for ourselves if Kaspersky is still a great antivirus option – at least for non-U.S. users – focusing on areas important to users such as ease of use, privacy, cost, customer support, and threat detection ability.

Right off the bat, we learned that Kaspersky protects against a wide range of threat types. Primarily, it detects and removes malware including viruses, spyware, adware, ransomware, keyloggers, remote access trojans, and zero-day attacks.

Kaspersky also has a Web Anti-Virus feature that monitors web traffic to stop attempts to visit phishing websites or download malicious files. In 2021, this feature alone blocked nearly 65 million unique malicious objects from entering devices.6 As cool as that sounds, though, that feature is not exactly unique to Kaspersky or antivirus software in general. We also see it from VPNs, particularly the top VPN options like NordVPN and Surfshark. It’s definitely a nice feature to have, but don’t let it be the main reason you’ll choose Kaspersky.

Our primary focus is Kaspersky’s ability to detect malware and threats existing on local devices. So we purchased the cheapest subscription available, which was Kaspersky AntiVirus a.k.a. Kaspersky Standard. This software doesn’t offer a firewall, parental controls, or password storage, but it does include the Web Anti-Virus feature mentioned above.

Should you wish to bundle add-on software and tools, we recommend either the Kaspersky Plus and Premium plans, both of which offer all-in-one digital security through a host of other Kaspersky tools and services.

Testing Kaspersky for Viruses

We installed Kaspersky first on a Windows desktop. The setup was a breeze. It took about three minutes to download all the resources needed, but it was all automatic. We started the install wizard, got up to get a cup of coffee, and it was done by the time we got back to our chairs.

Once installed, we cleared our desktop and started the first scan. This took about 18 minutes, which is normal for a first scan. It was actually quite fast, given that we had to wait overnight for the first scan to finish when we tested McAfee.

Kaspersky’s first scan didn’t turn up anything. It gave us the all clear, so to test Kaspersky’s real capabilities, we loaded our test computer with five of the sneakiest pieces of malware we could get our hands on. One is even hiding within a .zip archive file, and it’s the toughest one to detect. Only about 30-percent of the 40 antivirus software we tested detected it.

So how did Kaspersky do? It detected all five malware. You’d think that’s normal, but in our testing, most good software detects only three of five. Some even detected just one. Kaspersky’s 100-percent detection rate is rare; only one other software we tested achieved that feat. That one was Bitdefender. You can read about our virus detection test in our in-depth review of Bitdefender.

Third-Party Tests Corroborate Our Results

Five viruses is a pretty small sample size, we must admit. Fortunately, we’re not the only ones who test antivirus software. AV-Test, an institution that tests antivirus software in controlled environments, tested Kaspersky most recently in October 2023. Their results corroborated ours.

AV-Test gave Kaspersky a 100-percent score when it comes to both detecting zero-day malware attacks and detecting widespread and prevalent malware discovered within four weeks before the test. AV-Test tested it both on Android and Windows.

Those results show that Kaspersky is really great at detecting malware. And unlike our test with a small sample size of five malware, AV-Test used nearly 20,000 samples.

Purchasing and Installing Kaspersky

To us, the best antivirus software doesn’t just detect malware well; it also provides a good user-experience. That also includes a seamless buying and set up process, so let’s backtrack a little and talk about our experience purchasing and installing Kaspersky’s software.

In our experience, buying Kaspersky is straightforward. Its website lists a number of options both for personal and business use. For the former, three options are available: Kaspersky Standard, Plus, and Premium. Unsurprisingly, the most expensive option is what Kaspersky recommends, but we suggest taking a look at each option to see what works best for you and your budget.

For us, the Kaspersky Standard plan offered everything we needed to test the antivirus software. It didn’t have any of the extras like a VPN and identity protection, but the antivirus software that comes with it is full-featured. It can perform scans, offers real-time protection, and even has performance optimization for desktops (Windows and macOS) and smartphones (Android and iOS).

We paid $29.99 for an entire year of access, which averages out to just over $1 per month. That’s a great price if you’re just testing the waters. Better still, it comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee; if Kaspersky doesn’t turn out to be as good as expected, you can cancel within 30 days and request a refund.

Once we purchased the license, the download went right through and took under a minute, even on our laggy computer. Unlike some other tiered-price software, we were glad to see that Kaspersky did not immediately try to upsell us. Best of all, there wasn’t a pop-up in sight.

Our Experience Using Kaspersky Anti-Virus

Kaspersky Anti-Virus has a simple, clean interface focused mainly on its primary job of checking for viruses. It’s broken into four main sections: scan, database update, reports, and on-screen keyboard, and it also has links to settings and additional tools. We’ll run through them from the most simple to the most complicated.

On-Screen Keyboard

The on-screen keyboard feature may seem trivial — unnecessary even. But to those familiar with the keylogger method of hacking, this is a nice addition.

Hackers use programs that record keystrokes (a.k.a. keyloggers) to steal personal information, account passwords, and other data we type on our keyboards. It’s a sneaky way to steal data and it’s often left unnoticed.

With Kaspersky’s malware detection capability, we’re positive it would have detected keyloggers if we had any on our computer, but as an added measure, we like to use the on-screen keyboard when typing sensitive information like passwords. It’s less convenient to use than a normal keyboard, but on-screen keyboards provide extra privacy (unless someone is watching from behind you).

Reports

Just as it sounds, Kaspersky’s Reports section showed us details on the software’s scans of files, web traffic, network threats, and more. That’s also where we found data from one of Kaspersky’s more advanced features, System Watcher. While we thankfully weren’t the victims of a malware attack while testing the product, System Watcher provided us the ability to roll back the impact of a malware attack, like remote file locks.

Database Update

The Database Update section was just as straightforward. It let us know that the software was up to date with all of the latest information about threats, and was set to automatically update at regular intervals. We had the option to set it to refresh at certain times, but we thought it was best to leave the recommended auto updates in place. It’s also possible to run a manual update.

Scans

Onto the most important part! The scans section is the meat and potatoes of this software. The scan menu offered a host of features, the most prominent of which is the Quick Scan. This scan, which we ran right away, took seven minutes. It focused on the areas on our computer most susceptible to viruses and malware. If it found anything troubling, the software would run a full scan of every single piece of information on the machine.

While our quick scan didn’t find anything on our computer, we decided to run a full scan manually, even though Kaspersky noted that it “may take a while and slow down your computer.” In our experience, that’s putting it mildly—the full scan took hours (we started it in the mid-evening and were in bed before it finished) and our computer, which was already on the older and slower side, basically ground to a halt. This was definitely disappointing, though we can’t say Kaspersky didn’t warn us. Surprisingly, everything came back clean!

Other scanning options include Selective Scan, which we used to check out individual folders and files, and a removable drive scan to protect against any dangers on a USB or hard drive. We set each type of scan to run on a schedule of our choice (options included every hour, every week, or every time the application is launched). After our experience with the full scan, we appreciated that Kaspersky offers the option to set the software to only run when the computer is idle so it won’t slow down important work. We ultimately set the software to run a Quick Scan every day and a Full Scan once a month at a time when the computer wasn’t being used.

Despite the ease of changing the settings, we were surprised that the default setting on download was for manual (on-demand) for both basic and full scans. Though a warning stated that Kaspersky didn’t recommend leaving it set to manual, we wouldn’t have found that information had we not checked the settings. We found this strange. A number of other settings are enabled by default (like deletion of malicious tools and automatic launch of the software at computer startup). We did notice, however, that the “Background scan” mode, which scans sections of the computer like the system memory every six hours, was switched on by default. That’s a start, but it’s not enough for total protection. Kaspersky should probably make the scheduling settings more clear so that newer anti-virus software users don’t inadvertently leave their computers unprotected.

As a whole, we found Kaspersky Anti-Virus to be very customizable. We especially loved the fact that there is a setting called “Gamer Mode”. This mode automatically postpones scheduled scans if the computer is running an app like a game in full-screen. As avid gamers, we hate being interrupted by pop-ups or slowed down by programs running in the background, and we can report that we weren’t interrupted at all during our test period.

We also appreciated that the software automatically postponed its tasks when the computer was running on battery or when the disks were running at high loads, reducing slowdowns. And we were grateful that Kaspersky allowed us to easily opt out of seeing special offers or receiving advertising from the company within the app. All in all, the app provided an experience that we found straightforward and customizable, and we appreciated the simple, easy to navigate design.

Kaspersky Anti-Virus Pricing

While Kaspersky offers several different levels of protection that combine antivirus with capabilities like VPNs and child settings, here we’re focusing on the straight antivirus offering (but if you want to learn more about VPNs, read our VPN guide or our list of the best VPN options).

We paid $27.99 for one year of Kaspersky Standard (formerly Anti-Virus), which covered both our Lenovo ThinkPad and two other Windows computers. That price is a first-time customer deal, though, so we’ll be sure to keep an eye on the renewal, which costs $56.99.

A Kaspersky subscription can cover as many as 10 devices, which is perfect for families. Although adults primarily need antivirus software, leaving a child’s smartphone without antivirus is one of the biggest mistakes parents make when setting up a child’s smartphone. Don’t make that mistake.

After all, Kaspersky’s pricing is on the lower end of the spectrum. Keep in mind that the subscription price you’re paying is good for one or two years, so if you do the math, the cost of protecting one device is less than a dollar per month. That and Kaspersky’s skill at detecting viruses and malware make for a good purchase.

Kaspersky is particularly cost-effective if you’re looking to protect a number of devices. One year of protection for 10 devices costs less than $50. For roughly the same price, you can get protection from Kaspersky’s rival Norton for only five devices. You’d need to pay at least $99 to get 10-device protection from Norton, although that subscription plan offers other premium benefits.

From some other brands, 10-device protection is not even available. For example, TotalAV can protect a maximum of six devices with its most advanced plan, which costs $49.99 in the first year.

It’s safe to say that Kaspersky is a cost-effective solution for households with multiple devices.

Kaspersky Anti-Virus App

While we tested Kaspersky’s Windows app for this review, it’s also available for Android and iOS devices, although they weren’t included in the Kaspersky Anti-Virus package we purchased. In the Google Play Store, it’s listed under Kaspersky Mobile Antivirus: AppLock & Web Security, alongside a shiny 4.8 customer rating. With a 4.7 rating, the iOS app can be found under the name Kaspersky Security Cloud & VPNWare on the App store. While we only tested the desktop app, those reviews are certainly a strong sign that the phone versions are also well-designed.