Kaspersky Lab is packing up its infrastructure in Russia and setting up shop in Switzerland amid comments from the Dutch government that the Russian firm's software is risky.
The firm is moving a number of its core processes from Russia to Switzerland as part of its Global Transparency connections at an estimated cost of $12 million.
“In a rapidly changing industry such as ours we have to adapt to the evolving needs of our clients, stakeholders and partners,” Kaspersky CEO Eugene Kaspersky said in a May 15, 2018, press release. “Transparency is one such need, and that is why we've decided to redesign our infrastructure and move our data processing facilities to Switzerland.”
Kaspersky plans to open a data center which will store information on users in regions such as Europe, North America and Australia in Zurich by the end of 2019 and before the end of 2018 will have also shifted its software build conveyor," a set of tools that assembles the applications, and plans to sign its threat detection rule databases with a digital signature in Switzerland.
The National Cyber Security Centre, which last year banned the use of Kaspersky products from government departments, said the move doesn't change their stance on the firm's products but did say it was a move in the right direction.