Kaspersky Antivirus
Karlyn Hemmerling
Using the same award-winning antivirus protection trusted and loved by over 400 million users, our new plans are available in a range of device / year options and are cross-OS compatible. Learn more about their advanced privacy and identity features here.
Kaspersky Standard, Kaspersky Plus, and Kaspersky Premium combine the latest cybersecurity technology to offer more comprehensive protection and an even better user experience. You can learn more here.
There are many antivirus options available, but Kaspersky is trusted by millions of users worldwide and our security plans have been consistently ranked as the best antivirus programs on the market. Our new security plans provide advanced security features, such as multiple layers of protection against various threats, real-time scanning, and frequent updates to keep your devices secure.
Antivirus and anti-malware software are both designed to protect your computer from online threats, but they differ in terms of their scope of protection. Antivirus software is primarily focused on preventing viruses, worms, and other forms of malware from infecting your computer, while anti-malware software is designed to detect and remove a wider range of online threats, including viruses, spyware, Trojans, adware, and more.
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Kaspersky Anti-Virus features include real-time protection, detection and removal of viruses, trojans, worms, spyware, adware, keyloggers, malicious tools and auto-dialers, as well as detection and removal of rootkits.
Microsoft Windows users may download an antivirus rescue disk that scans the host computer during booting inside an isolated Linux environment. In addition, Kaspersky Anti-Virus prevents itself from being disabled by malware without user permission via password access prompts upon disabling protection elements and changing internal settings. It also scans incoming instant messenger traffic, email traffic, automatically disables links to known malware hosting sites while using Internet Explorer or Firefox, and includes free technical support and free product upgrades within paid-subscription periods.[4]
Kaspersky Anti-Virus lacks certain features found in Kaspersky Internet Security. These missing features include a personal firewall, HIPS, Secure Keyboard, AntiSpam, AntiBanner and parental control tools.[4]
In 2005, two critical flaws were discovered in Kaspersky Anti-Virus. One could let attackers commandeer systems that use it,[6] and one allowed CHM files to insert malicious code.[7] Days later, the software maker had offered preliminary protection to customers, and a week later a permanent patch was made available.[8]
An edition of Kaspersky's anti-virus solution for Linux workstations is available to business consumers.[9] It offers many of the features included in the mainstream version for Windows, including on-access and on-demand scanners.
The newly released Macintosh capable edition of Kaspersky Anti-Virus is compatible on (Intel Processor Based) Mac OS X Tiger and higher to include the brand new version Mac OS X Snow Leopard, released in August 2009. Kaspersky Lab internal testing concludes consuming only 2% CPU impact on performance and is designed to maintain a user friendly Mac-like interface with which Mac users are familiar. Kaspersky Anti-Virus for Mac contains definitions to detect and block malware affecting Windows, Linux and macOS alike. Kaspersky Anti-Virus for Mac also scans shared folders of users running Windows using Virtual PC on capable Apple Macintosh personal computers.[10]
A DVD-ROM or CD-ROM drive, Internet Explorer 8 or above and Windows Installer 3.0 or above are also required for the installation of Kaspersky Anti-Virus in Windows. The latest version can either be downloaded from their official website or purchased through retail.
According to AV-Comparatives, Kaspersky Anti-Virus rates highly amongst virus scanners in terms of detection rates and malware removal, even despite the fact that the program has failed two Virus Bulletin tests in 2007 and another two in 2008.[11] For example, in a Malware Removal test done by AV-Comparatives the Kaspersky Antivirus 2013 was awarded the highest "Advanced+" rating and was able to successfully remove all of 14 malware samples used in that test and in the following File Detection test Kaspersky Antivirus 2013 was also able to achieve the same "Advanced+" rating with a 99.2% sample detection rate.[12][13] In addition, PC World awarded Kaspersky Anti-Virus 6 the highest rank in its 2007 anti-virus comparative.[14] The well-known and highly regarded Ars Technica lists Kaspersky as one of the best choices for Anti-Virus on the Windows platform.[15]
In January 2024 Forbes Advisor compared Kaspersky with other tools such as BitDefender and Avast and rated Kaspersky in first place ("4.5" out of 5) of the platforms reviewed in their comparison exercise.[18]
In March 2015, Bloomberg accused Kaspersky of having close ties to Russian military and intelligence officials.[19] Kaspersky criticized the article in his blog, calling the coverage "sensationalist" and guilty of "exploiting paranoia" to "increase readership".[20]
In June 2015, United States National Security Agency and United Kingdom Government Communications Headquarters agents broke Kaspersky antivirus software for spying purposes[clarification needed].[21]
I am not familiar with Kaspersky AV options, but if there is no option in settings you'd better don't fight with software that you installed yourself on your pc. If you don't like it - change it, otherwise accept it.
I personally prefer old antivirus versions (with newest database updates of course), because they do only what they should do and nothing more. They are not uploading "suspicious" files to their servers and not injecting anything.
Also I recommend anyone to buy only "AntiVirus", but not "InternetSecurity" or something like that, because that things cost a lot, don't work, slows your browser, and sometimes do some really suspicious things.
I am trying to automate the installation of Kaspersky AntiVirus. Right now we manually install it on each computer and I shouldn't have to. The actual Kaspersky installation gets installed as it should because I just drag the .pkg into Admin. However, the Network Agent that assigns what server it looks for doesn't work. I had made a Snapshot and typed in our server, but from our console we can see the computer but it isn't talking with our server for remote activation.
That aside, the simple (And undignified) way we set KAV to deploy is to drop both dmgs into tmp (With their install scripts) and run the script attatched. With the Netagent you can run the script with -r arguement and specify your server, or just edit the script to include the URL and bypass that. (See for reference.) Both installs via script run silent, and afterwards our clients do check in to the administration server to acquire their license. I can't speak to snapshotting, but trying to include the install created config file in pkg deployments caused unknown errors in our sync. Possibly that's what you're seeing.
I have the install.sh and when I put our server name in the -r argument and it returned an error. I am probably missing something really obvious. We ran the Kaspersky tool on our Admin server, but I don't know what to do next.
For the netagent, I've wrapped the klnagent folder (With the script [install.sh] and dmg) inside a package that drops the folder on our client machine at /private/tmp (This is just because we clean our tmp spaces so the folder won't linger). Currently, I just have the script edited so that the variable assigned to IP points to our administration server in lieu of using the -r command. I've sometimes seen an error where the dmg won't mount if you don't first cd into the directory where it and the script are, though that's been rare.
Dropping the package (and the edited script) and running the script via Execute Command in the 'Files and Processes' section of the Policy has been working for us. It's a simpler command, not requiring any arguments so maybe that'll work for you?
The way I found to do this was to edit the install.sh script for the NetAgent to specify the server using its DNS name. There is a field for it at the top of the script when you edit it. Following the post @mccreedys made about using the Kaspersky Installation instructions, I followed the Apple Remote Desktop Installation section. I used the Packages program to create the package for the agents three files. (install.sh, klnagent.kud, and klnagentmac.dmg) I followed Rich Trouton's Blog about making an Office install package. Here to make my package. By running the script as a post-installation script in Packages, it installs the netagent properly. I then took the setup files for the client and did the same thing and made a Client package that runs the install script post-installation as well. I then took both packages and made them one big installation package with the netagent installing first and then the client using the exact method Rich explains in his blog. It has worked perfectly in deployment. Hope this helps.