Kaspersky Next EDR Foundations

Who owns it

Kaspersky was founded in Moscow in 1997 by Eugene and Natalya Kaspersky, Alexey De-Monderik and Vadim Bogdanov; the operating company is AO Kaspersky Lab and the brand dropped "Lab" in 2019. It calls Zurich its European headquarters and says it processes European threat data in two Swiss data centres under its Global Transparency Initiative, claims we record but could not see independently audited. The UK picture from Companies House, read on 9 September 2026: the original Kaspersky Lab UK Limited (1998) is in liquidation with overdue filings; the active company is Kaspersky Labs Limited (2001, originally registered as Decoradvice Limited), whose person with significant control is Evgeny Kaspersky, nationality Russian, resident in Russia, with 75 per cent or more of the shares and votes. Then the government record. The US Department of Commerce issued its Final Determination on 20 June 2024 prohibiting Kaspersky from selling to US persons from 20 July 2024 and from providing updates from 29 September 2024, saying the Russian government "has proven that it has the capability and intent to exploit Russian companies like Kaspersky"; a million US consumers were switched to UltraAV. The NCSC advised UK government departments in December 2017 to avoid Russia-based antivirus on systems handling secret information and, on 29 March 2022, told organisations serving Ukraine, running critical infrastructure or working against Russian interests to reconsider the risk of Russian technology while saying consumer use remained safe for now. Germany's BSI formally warned against Kaspersky products on 15 March 2022 and recommended replacing them; Italy restricted public-sector use the same month; Australia banned it from government systems in 2025. Saaskly's rule is that a security vendor with Russian ownership, management or engineering is marked down hard with the evidence stated, and Kaspersky is why the rule exists.

What it costs

The product, judged on its own, is good and cheap. Prices are in pounds, read live on 9 September 2026 in the calculator on kaspersky.co.uk; VAT basis is not stated. Kaspersky Next EDR Foundations, the plan we score, was £775.00 for 25 users on a one-year term with a 15 per cent introductory discount, which is £31.00 a user a year, and each user licence covers a desktop or a file server plus two mobiles from the same pool, so servers cost nothing extra. Kaspersky Next EDR Optimum was £1,587.50 (£63.50 a user, 10 per cent off) with deeper EDR and Microsoft 365 protection bundled; XDR Optimum, MXDR Optimum and the Expert tiers are quote-only, and Kaspersky Managed Detection and Response has no small-business price. Three-year terms are discounted. There is card checkout and a "buy via partner" link side by side, a 30-day trial, a 30-day money-back guarantee and auto-renewal stated under the price. Kaspersky Small Office Security is cheaper but has no console. The old Kaspersky Endpoint Security Cloud name has gone from the UK site.

What you get and what to watch

Basic EDR is in Foundations, with anti-ransomware, web threat protection, device control, patch management, encryption management, vulnerability scanning and application control listed as common Next features, mobile protection for Android and iOS in the licence pool, and Windows Server versions from 2008 R2 to 2022 supported by the underlying Windows agent. The Pro View cloud console is the management surface; whether it can be pinned to a UK or EU region is not stated. An MSP programme exists; RMM integrations, API and SSO were not confirmed and no MCP server was found. Standard support is free, with an MSA-based Extended tier for 24/7 priority. Kaspersky says its own Next customers need an IT specialist for about 15 minutes a week.

The labs rate it highly: Approved in AV-Comparatives' H1 2026 business test, 6/6/6 at AV-TEST in April 2026, four SE Labs awards in 2026 with AAA and 100 per cent protection and legitimate accuracy in Q4 2025 and Q1 2026. It has not taken part in a MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise evaluation since round two in 2019. The Wall Street Journal reported in October 2017 that Russian hackers had used Kaspersky software to find classified NSA material on a contractor's home computer, which Kaspersky denied. Trustpilot's UK profile is closed to new reviews, with 13,204 historical ones and no current score. Not yet tested by Saaskly: assessed on published pricing, the independent test labs, vendor documentation and third-party reviews.