From Russia With Security Help 2From Russia With Security Help 2

Security vendor Kaspersky Lab has revealed plans to open an independent U.S. entity, Kaspersky Lab Inc. The Moscow-based company, which recorded $27 million in revenue in 2004 and 80% year-to-year growth, has had a presence in the United States for years through original equipment manufacturing partners that use its antivirus engine in their products. Now, Kaspersky sees an opportunity to directly profit from the booming antivirus and security market in the United States.

Of course, the same can be said about Microsoft. Still, despite Microsoft's growing focus on security, Kaspersky Lab's head of antivirus research, Eugene Kaspersky, says there will be plenty of business to go around. "Microsoft will have preinstalled protection against a lot of threats but not against all of them," he says. "In the modern Internet environment, that's not enough."

Cybercriminals have been moving toward more-targeted attacks to avoid the attention of law-enforcement agencies, Kaspersky says. Such attacks, he adds, won't provide enough feedback to Microsoft's SpyNet community, which reports malicious software to trigger an immune response by Windows AntiSpyware.

"Microsoft will be like a standard lock on a car," Kaspersky says. "Usually, that's good enough. But in an aggressive environment, you install an additional alarm system."