Fed Kaspersky Ban Made Permanent by New Rules

The Federal Acquisition Regulation Council has published a final, formal regulation that bars government agencies, departments, and bureaus from buying security software and services from Kaspersky Lab. This new rule replaces a temporary regulation that had instructed Federal purchasers on how they should act in abiding with terms of the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act.

The new regulation, spelled out in Sections 1634 (a) and (b) of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018, is a blanket prohibition that extends beyond the government itself; no contractor with a government practice is allowed to have Kaspersky software or services in any of its systems, either.

Kaspersky was hit with the prohibition in 2017 because of concerns that it could be serving as a "backdoor" attack surface for agents of Russia's government. Kaspersky has protested that the regulation is unconstitutional because it targets a single company, not a set of behaviors.

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