Kaspersky Lab opens new transparency center in Madrid and conducts independent legal assessment of Russian legislation related to data-processing

Kaspersky Lab is opening a Transparency Center in Madrid, which in addition to a similar center opened in 2018 in Zurich, will serve as a trusted facility for the company’s partners and government stakeholders to come and check the source code of the company’s products. In addition to being a code review facility, the new center will function as a briefing center where guests will be able to learn more about Kaspersky Lab’s engineering and data processing practices. The center will open for its first visitors in June.
The new center is being opened as part of the company’s Global Transparency Initiative – a set of measures being brought to life in order to fulfill growing demand from partners and government stakeholders for more information on how the Kaspersky Lab’s products and technologies work.

Since the company opened its first Transparency Center in Zurich in November 2018, it has been receiving requests from business customers to learn more about how it is transparent, including queries on product functionality and data processing. Along with being a place to undertake “standard” source code review, the Spanish facility will also serve as a briefing center, where visitors can learn more about the company’s portfolio, engineering, and data processing practices.

This information will be delivered in an easily accessible way. The company has developed a review system, offering multiple options that adjust in line with what visitors are specifically interested in learning about. This system offers multiple review options, from a general non-technical overview of the company’s engineering practices and data protection standards, through to a deep and comprehensive review of the critical parts of the company’s source code. More information about the available options can be found on the Transparency Centers website

Previously announced plans to open Transparency Centers in Asia and North America by 2020 are still ongoing. In addition to the opening of the new Transparency Center, the company is publishing the results of a voluntary third-party legal assessment aimed at providing an independent evaluation of the obligations the company adheres to in line with Russian legislation. Conducted by a prominent Russian and international law expert, Dr. Kaj Hober, Professor of International Investment and Trade Law at Uppsala University in Sweden, the analysis covers three Russian laws related to data processing and storage*, which were widely reported as the ones which Kaspersky Lab – being a Russian based company – is obliged to comply with. The results following the analysis are freely available online and provide an unbiased and fair legal assessment to the company’s customers and partners looking for reliable information about Kaspersky Lab. Based on Dr. Kaj Hober’s review, the company does not fall under obligations of those legal acts primarily due to the nature of its activities.