This may not be a suitable subject for debate, but here goes anyway. For a few years now, my bank has supplied me, free, with Kaspersky antivirus, rated by others as being top-notch in the arena of security apps. Now, all of a sudden, Kaspersky has been accused by our current administration that it is linked with Putin and his do-gooders, and the government has put a warning across the use of that antivirus software. There must be others who, like me, use Kaspersky and are wondering if it's still safe to use.

'Kaspersky Virus Scanner' is damaged and can't be opened. Delete 'Kaspersky Virus Scanner' and download it again from the App Store. Have done this three times - same result - incompatible with this version.

Should I be concerned? My bank has not said a word on any possible solution to this problem. What do you think? If it's not safe, what would be a good free alternative to Kaspersky?

--Submitted by Lenny L. To all participants: please be considerate to others and keep this discussion civil. I switched to Kaspersky Antivirus, when it was first offered in the UK, where I then lived.

I upgraded to the full internet suite when the licence for my existing firewall expired. I now have three machines with Total Security and two with Internet Security and have no qualms about any possible links to government agencies. Eugene has said if the Russian government tried to intervene, he would relocate overseas. I've met Eugene and some of his team at a couple of security seminars and judge them to be people of high integrity and competence, demonstrated by the fact I have never had any malware getting through to any of my machines since I started using their products. The hourly check for updates is the best in the business, I believe.

Your bank is still happy with Kaspersky products, that would be good enough for me. I'm interested that you asked for a free recommendation, should you decide to jump ship, since Kaspersky is not free (your bank supplies it for free but ultimately, who pays your bank's business expenses?). A review this month, here in Australia of most of the AV suites in one of the major magazines rated Bitdefender and Kaspersky on a par as the best functionality and Avast as the best free alternative, for what it's worth. It looked like a thorough study to me.

Could Kaspersky be hacked? It's software and ANY software can be hacked, given enough resources. I won't go into the circumstances of the US government decision to discontinue using Kaspersky, it is beyond the scope of this discussion, except to say that I believe they are wrong. My personal opinion, others may differ.

Microsoft home and office for mac. With the greatest respect, you've had no malware getting through to your machines AS FAR AS YOU KNOW. I'm no expert but I feel absolutely certain that no software or hardware can be described as absolutely safe. Nor, I believe, will they ever be absolutely safe. So I guess the only strategies that can be used to prepare for the worst are: 1. Thorough technical due diligence when making recruitment and IT security decisions. Not only have I always perceived Kaspersky as a risk I would rather not take, but I also fear that Russia and rogue states and criminal interests around the world would not find it too difficult to place IT saboteurs as employees with Kaspersky and its competitors around the world.

Mitigation of the consequences of successful malware by designing disaster recovery solutions to deal with worst case scenarios in all walks of life - whether directly or indirectly dependent on computer systems. I've been in I.T.

For 28 years and have utilized and tested many security products over the years. I've been using Kaspersky Internet Security on my primary systems for several years now and have found it to be one of the best I have ever run. Being a tech, I'm fortunate to have several systems running at any time, so I am able to run different security products on a couple of my lab systems for comparison. In that regard, I have found Kaspersky and Bitdefender currently to offer the best protection, with the least problems otherwise. I recently read a review from PcMag comparing products where they still rate Kaspersky high, and have a disclaimer basically saying that until the accusations are actually proven, they will continue to rate it as such. Many, in the I.T. Community still regard Kaspersky as one of the best, with no concerns over hacking.