Kaspersky Lab said on Thursday that it has added a new feature to new versions of Kaspersky Internet Security and Kaspersky Anti-Virus that's designed to protect the user’s money when shopping and banking online. Called Safe Money, it serves as the "middleman" between your personal financial information and the Internet when making online transactions.
According to the company, Safe Money automatically activates when visiting the most common payment services (PayPal, etc.) and banking website -- additional sites and services can be added as well. The new feature also isolates payment operations in a special web browser to ensure transactions aren’t monitored.
Safe Money also verifies the authenticity of the banking or payment website, evaluates the security status of the user's computer, and provides a virtual keyboard for entering credit card or payment options - this prevents possible malware from logging any keystrokes on your physical keyboard. Safe Money will even warn about any existing threats that should be addressed prior to making payments.
In addition to Safe Money, the new Kaspersky Internet Security and Kaspersky Anti-Virus adds a new feature called Automatic Exploit Prevention. This will not only alert users when out-of-date programs are running on the machine, but will protect them from possible exploits caused by software vulnerabilities until the user is able to update them.
"Kaspersky Lab’s technology watches over the programs installed on your PC and knows how these programs are supposed to act," the firm said on Thursday. "If the program tries to perform unusual or unauthorized activities, Automatic Exploit Prevent blocks the abnormal action while still allowing the program to perform its normal operations. This means Kaspersky Internet Security and Kaspersky Anti-Virus will keep you safe without inconveniencing you by shutting off the applications you use every day."
Kaspersky Lab said that from January through March 2012, the company detected more than 1 million malicious programs designed to exploit vulnerabilities in commonly-used software.
Kaspersky Internet Security and Kaspersky Anti-Virus are available for purchase now on Kaspersky Lab’s online store, and at retail stores across the U.S. and Canada. Current customers may upgrade free of charge from Kaspersky Internet Security 2012 and Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2012 to the new products for the remainder of their existing license period. A standard subscription – 3-user licenses for a 1-year period – is $79.95 for Kaspersky Internet Security and $59.95 for Kaspersky Anti-Virus.
