Kaspersky Small Office Security
Kaspersky Lab released a new version of Kaspersky Small Office Security. This solution is specifically designed to protect small businesses from IT threats. Kaspersky Small Office Security has been developed with the characteristics of small businesses and their needs in mind.
In advanced economies, small businesses are the foundation of the whole economic system. According to IDC estimates, there are more than 75 million companies in the world today with fewer than ten people in the staff. The developers of information security solutions often ignore this segment. However, small companies have to deal with cyber threats just like everyone else. Therefore, these businesses also need tools to protect their infrastructure, no matter the size. Secondly, small businesses have their own specific demands for security solutions as the products targeted at larger organizations are not always able to meet these requirements.
One of the key requests of this kind is the minimized effort required to install and administer solutions. In small companies not directly related to information technology there are no system administrators on the staff. Firstly, not all companies can afford them; secondly, not every company is ready to hire: employees handles IT themselves since computer literacy is common today.
However, recent studies show that people with “basic knowledge” are seldom well aware of actual cyber threats. As a result, small businesses are even more vulnerable than medium and large companies where professionals are involved in administering the infrastructure.
A key feature of Kaspersky Small Office Security is the ease of its installation and management, so that business owners can stick to their core activity without spending an excessive amount of time and effort on IT issues.
Simplicity is not the opposite of efficiency though. Kaspersky Small Office Security comprises a large number of tools to protect small businesses, and the new version has expanded its features.
Safe Money technology is among the new features. Safe Money automatically protects users’ financial transactions from phishing and other attempts at intercepting data. The support for mobile devices is also expanded. Apparently, today employees in any small or start-up company actively use smartphones and tablets. Therefore, their protection is badly needed. Kaspersky Small Office Security incorporates support for Android tablets and smartphones, protecting these devices from mobile malware (99% of which is just written for Android), protection against network threats and personal data protection. The new version of Kaspersky Small Office Security provides protection of mobile devices from loss and theft. Device owners can now locate lost or stolen devices and delete all the data on them if it is impossible to retrieve the device.
The new version of Kaspersky Small Office Security has a very important protection function added – Automatic Exploit Prevention. Its significance is hard to overrate. Too often cyber criminals learn of any vulnerability even before the software developers and security professionals know about it. Protection against zero day exploits can only be pro-active by using automated tools that monitor the behavior of the most vulnerable software and block “non-standard” activity, which may indicate attempts at exploiting unknown flaws.
Kaspersky Small Office Security also has an integrated password manager that allows company employees to memorize only one “master password” while other details are stored in a safe mode and entered when necessary. Password vault can be set up on any medium including a flash drive.
One of the most important features for small businesses is the online data backup. Due to the fact that there may be no system administrator in a company at all, backing up the data is problematic but vital anyway. No one knows when hardware may fail or some employee may accidentally delete a sensitive file. Kaspersky Small Office Security greatly simplifies the process of data backup on any medium whether it is a local hard drive or a “cloud.” We should also mention the option of encrypting sensitive data.
In general the new version of Kaspersky Small Office Security helps a business owner with just basic computer literacy to centrally manage the entire infrastructure of the company like setting each employee’s individual permissions and access restrictions to internal resources and specific sites or whole categories of web sites (e.g., social networks, etc.). You can also remotely adjust security settings for each computer or mobile device used in the company.
There are up to 25 Small Office Security licenses available for every business, and each license covers both a PC (on Windows) and a mobile device (on Android). Thus, the 10 licenses de facto provide protection for twenty user devices.
In addition, Kaspersky Small Office Security supports popular server packages – Windows Server 2008 R2; Small Business Server 2011 Essentials/Standard and Windows Server 2012 Foundation/Essentials/Standard. Support for Windows 8.1 Windows Server 2012 R2 will be available in the near future.
