US government agencies are no longer allowed to use Kaspersky software

Government agencies in the United States are no longer allowed to use software from Russian Kaspersky. US President Donald Trump has signed the bill allowing a ban on Kaspersky software.

The ban that Trump signed has mainly symbolic meaning, because almost all government agencies had already removed the Kaspersky software from their computers a few months ago, Reuters reports. The US Senate already voted in September on the bill that included the Kaspersky ban.

The US government believes that the presence of Russian software on government computers opens the door to espionage, for example through backdoors. Kaspersky has always denied cooperating with the Russian government and has offered to let independent experts look at the source code of its programs. According to the US government, that is not enough.

Kasperksy said in a statement that he expressed concern about the ban, because of its “geographical approach to digital security.” Kaspersky is a Russian maker of antimalware software and digital security products.