Last week, the US government announced an unprecedented ban on the sale in the United States of any software made by the Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky.
Days after the ban was announced, some US companies that are official Kaspersky resellers — or managed service provider (MSP) partners — say they are left confused, angry and worried about how the ban will affect them.
The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, which called it a “first-of-its-kind” ban, said it took action because the antivirus and security software maker is based in Russia, which poses unacceptable security risks cyberspace and privacy for Americans.
Top Kaspersky executives were also sanctioned, effectively preventing US businesses and customers from paying Kaspersky from July 20, when the ban on selling the software to new customers begins. Kaspersky will have the right to provide software and security updates to existing US customers until September 29, after which the updates will stop and Kaspersky’s software will become much less effective.
In his electronic guidance, the Commerce Department acknowledged that US businesses will no longer be allowed to resell Kaspersky software after the ban takes effect, but provided minimal guidance for affected businesses. A Commerce Department spokesperson had no comment when reached by TechCrunch
TechCrunch spoke to people who run four companies that are listed on Kaspersky’s official website as MSP partners in the United States. All four companies criticized the impending ban.
Avi Fleischer, founder of Technical Difficulties, told TechCrunch that he not only sells Kaspersky to his customers, but also uses its products on his phone and PC. He added that the ban is “annoying, to say the least,” because he will now have to find another antivirus company and migrate all of his customers to the new product, which will cost him time and money.
“That’s a lot of time wasted for nothing. And I don’t see how I can actually charge the end users for that,” Fleischer said in a phone call. “It was my suggestion that they use Kaspersky, and now Kaspersky is banned by the United States government. What should I do;”
Fleischer said he has between 300 and 400 client endpoints — that is, computers or servers — running Kaspersky software right now. And migrating all of its customers to another provider isn’t just a matter of uninstalling Kaspersky and installing competing antivirus software. He explained that once he switches to different software, he should make sure the new software is properly configured, that it doesn’t interfere with other network-based programs, and that his firewall rules are properly configured.
“So you have to make sure that when you migrate to another product, all of that — those exceptions and configurations — are manually put into the new product,” he said.
Fleischer said he previously moved his customers from a different antivirus to Kaspersky and it took him two months to complete the transition.
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Danny Falin, president of Georgia IT Consulting, said the ban is a “burden” on his company, his customers and other MSPs, and that the ban is a “political” decision by the Biden administration that will only hurt Americans the end.
“Millions of US consumers [use Kaspersky] for home [antivirus]… Biden is not punishing Kaspersky, he is punishing us,” Falin told TechCrunch in an email.
Falin said he and his company “will stay with Kaspersky as long as we can, it’s a good company.”
“I will sell it as long as they support it. I don’t disclose what we sell and make as a company but [the ban] they will hurt because they are cheaper and a better company than many here,” he added.
William Finnigan, owner of Office Smith, another Kaspersky MSP partner, told TechCrunch that, for now, his company is still a partner, but that the ban “causes me problems” because it’s unclear who will return money customers who use it and should stop using it.
“I’m trying to figure out what remedies my customers have from my wholesalers (the companies want their money back). I wish it was just a ban on future sales, but the fact that it will actively block updates from Kaspersky starting at the end of September is a huge problem for the company and its customers,” Finnigan said in an email. “It is unclear what costs, if any, will be incurred as the wholesaler and Kaspersky have not yet decided what they are going to do.”
The person who runs Adkins IT Support, who did not give his name, told TechCrunch in an email that the ban and subsequent sanctions against Kaspersky executives “are complete bull.”
“I have been forced to end my MSP partnership with Kaspersky against my will. With very little time to do this, I now have to replace software that has been a reliable line of defense for my customers due to geopolitical positioning,” they said.
The owner said that the future plan is to offer Kaspersky competitors to its customers and that the financial impact their company will bear will depend on the pricing of these competitors and how it compares to the previous pricing for Kaspersky.
It’s unclear how many people use Kaspersky in the United States. The company does not provide numbers broken down by country, and a representative did not respond to a request for comment. On its official website, Kaspersky states that it has more than 400 million individual customers and over 240,000 enterprise customers worldwide.
