A recent study done by O+K Research found that 77 per cent of computer users regularly shop online. With the rise in popularity of online shopping comes the negative aspect of cyber-criminals trolling for transaction information and many credit card numbers from unsuspecting users.
Kaspersky Lab conducted a study that showed 70 per cent of phishing emails trick victims into visiting malicious, cleverly-forged Web sites for the sole purpose of stealing their bank credentials.
The Moscow-based security vendor also found that more than 5,000 Web sites are compromised daily, including popular banking and shopping Web sites. This was one of the factors Kaspersky kept in mind when developing its Pure 3.0 Total Security product, which the company released this week.
Kaspersky has ramped up its security suite to include online banking security, password management, and online backup. Pure 3.0 also offers maximum protection for users to secure their online activities and digital assets across a home or SOHO network of PCs.
According to Kaspersky, many people keep important physical documents, cash, and family memories in fireproof safes in their homes, but do the opposite when its come to information stored on computers. This version of Pure acts as a vault, a life-boat, and personal security guard for all things stored and exchanged on users’ PCs for digital assets such as photos, music, and legal or financial documents.
The new version of Pure comes with Safe Money, which verifies that all Web sites requiring banking, payment, or shopping information are genuine. By using security certificates and the Web site’s reputation, Safe Money verifies the sites’ authenticity, and then automatically launches a secure Web browser to offer extra protection from online malware. For even more protection, Safe Money also includes a new Secure Keyboard feature, which ensures login information isn’t recorded by keylogging software. Secure Keyboard mode will activate automatically when someone opens a bank or payment website or inserts a password on any Web page.
Passwords have also become hard to managed and Kaspersky does its best with Online Password Manager, which allows users to access an online password vault to store all their log-in information in a single, secure vault, that can be synced across multiple PCs with PURE 3.0 installed on them, instead of carrying a list of passwords on a piece of paper, or worse, using the same details for every login. If users are looking to create the most secure passwords they can, the Kaspersky Password Manager will generate an incredibly sophisticated password so they don’t have to, and further save it to the cloud, so memorizing it won’t be necessary, the company said.
Kaspersky continues with the vault theme on its online backup technology on Pure with an integrated online backup feature. This feature allows users to automatically backup their files online through the Dropbox service. Kaspersky PURE 3.0 makes the transfer by prompting users to create their own Dropbox account upon their first backup session. Once the files have been backed up, users will be able to access the files from any computer with an internet connection.
Pure’s new Automatic Exploit Prevention technology anticipates malware attacks and blocks them by watching over the programs installed on the PC and monitoring them for abnormal behaviour. If the program tries to perform unusual or unauthorized activities, this technology blocks the potentially malicious action without automatically deleting the entire program, the company said.
To round out the features included in Pure 3.0, users are able to manage the security of multiple PCs from one, central computer.
Kaspersky Pure 3.0 Total Security is available for $89.95 in a three-user license. Current Kaspersky
Pure and Pure 2.0 customers may upgrade free of charge to version 3.0 for the remainder of their existing license period.