Kaspersky has been out of the SaaS market for a while, but now jumps back in with a cloud version of its Endpoint Protection product which uses the exact same core technology.
Mike Canavan, Vice President of Presales System Engineering at Kaspersky
Security software maker Kaspersky Lab has announced the availability of Kaspersky Endpoint Security Cloud, a SaaS version of its SMB-focused endpoint security product.
The new SaaS offering fills a void in Kaspersky’s inventory.
“We have had SaaS offerings in the past, but we didn’t have any active ones before this,” said Mike Canavan, Vice President of Presales System Engineering at Kaspersky. “In the past in SaaS, we focused purely on email scanning, and that service was discontinued.”
The new offering is a SaaS version of their mature Kaspersky Endpoint security product.
“We took the same technology as the endpoint client and redesigned it into a SaaS offering, including providing customers with a web interface for this,” Canavan said. “The core guts of the offering are still the same. That’s the important thing here, that it’s the same technology as our Endpoint Protection Product. The difference is that it’s now easier to manage, easier to provision and easier for customers to purchase.”
Kaspersky Endpoint Security Cloud protects Windows workstations, file servers, Android and iOS mobile devices against both known and emerging threats, including ransomware. Its multi-layered security protection includes Kaspersky Security Network and System Watcher.
Canavan said that adapting their endpoint technology to SaaS wasn’t a simple process because of management challenges.
“The way we do centralized management with Kaspersky Security Center is MMC -based, so translating it into a SaaS service isn’t as efficient as a Web server,” he said. “Basically, we had to rebuild the management interface so we could do this.”
While Kaspersky Endpoint Security Cloud is multi-tenanted and suitable for MSPs, Canavan said that it’s not exclusively an MSP product.
“It’s both for MSPs and for customers in sub-1000 user environments who are moving a lot of infrastructure into the cloud,” he stated. “We expect it will do well among both groups. MSPs have been using Kaspersky Security Centre, the same as the customers. The main difference is with that, the MSPs have charge of the underpinning architecture, which we now deliver as part of the SaaS model with Kaspersky Endpoint Security Cloud. This streamlines that whole process and makes it easier.”
Kaspersky Endpoint Security Cloud is available now.
