Non-EU vendorCybersecurityHeadquarters: RU

Kaspersky: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Kaspersky is a cybersecurity company that supplies security software for consumers and organisations. Its range includes antivirus protection for Windows, Mac, Linux and Android, a VPN and a password manager, and for businesses the Kaspersky Next line with EDR, XDR and managed detection and response, complemented by threat intelligence and security services. The products are installed on devices and servers and use cloud services for threat analysis.

Kaspersky was founded in 1997; according to Wikipedia it is headquartered in Moscow and privately held. By its own account, the company moved the storage and processing of customer threat data from Russia to two data centres in Zurich, Switzerland, covering users in Europe among others. The software is not open source. The company operates transparency centres where source code can be reviewed. European organisations should take the vendor's Russian origin into account; the US has banned its sales since 2024. Assess the risk against your own threat model.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with Kaspersky pre-selected

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Sovereignty score

42 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-250
Headquartered outside the EU (RU)
Data residency SOV-350
Hosting inside and outside Europe (CH, OTHER)
Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-340
Key management with a non-European vendor
Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
Closed source: switching requires data migration
Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-630
Closed source, runtime with the vendor

SOV codes: the matching objective in the European Commission's Cloud Sovereignty Framework. Official source

How the score is calculated

Facts and evidence

Last checked October 9, 2026

Headquarters	RU (OTHER)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decision	No — no adequacy decisionVerified by hand
Sovereignty model	Vendor-hosted (non-EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting	CH, OTHERVerified by hand
Open-source	NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Hosting signal	KL-EXT - Kaspersky Lab Switzerland GmbH, CH (CH)Technically measured
Category	Cybersecurity
Type	Product
Website	kaspersky.com ↗

The hosting signal shows the network that serves the vendor's website, often a CDN, and not necessarily where the service or your data is hosted. How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Kaspersky

The European alternatives to Kaspersky come from our knowledge base of over 6,800 vendors. We only list vendors headquartered in the EU or the EEA; fully European-owned vendors rank before vendors with a foreign owner. For each alternative you see the country, the open-source status and a short description.

Score per alternative: 0 = high exposure, 100 = sovereign

93 European Cybersecurity vendors are in the catalogue. View the whole category · Submit an alternative · View category on the map

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Why digital sovereignty matters with Kaspersky

Kaspersky is headquartered in RU, outside the EU. Contracts and data therefore also fall under non-European law. The GDPR applies through contractual terms, but in a conflict with local legislation you have less certainty than with a European vendor.

Kaspersky hosts data in CH, OTHER. Exactly what stays within the EU — and what does not — is defined by the vendor's data processing agreement and sub-processor list, not by a setting you control yourself; check those documents for the precise scope, including backups, logs and support access.

Kaspersky is closed source and hosted by the vendor. The encryption keys and the runtime sit with the vendor and switching requires data migration. Ask about bring-your-own-key, export options and open standards.

What this means for your organisation depends on your whole stack and context. The free assessment weighs Kaspersky together with your other vendors and gives a total score, a heatmap and the main risk drivers.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best European alternative to Kaspersky?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Kaspersky include Cryptshare, Bitdefender and ESET. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Kaspersky?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Kaspersky include CrowdSec and Greenbone. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is Kaspersky GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

Kaspersky is headquartered in RU (OTHER) and hosts data in CH, OTHER. The vendor states it is GDPR-compliant, but the data falls under non-EU jurisdiction. For full EU data residency the EU alternatives on this page usually offer more certainty.

Details and sources

Verified by handHeadquarters, owner, hosting locations and licence have been checked by us against public sources. Free of charge and for every vendor, not a paid label. Nothing in this knowledge base is taken over automatically. Last checked on October 9, 2026.

Sources

Public sources used in the latest check of this record.

Compliance evidence

The links below point to the vendor's own public documents. We only record what we found: a missing link means "not found publicly", not "not compliant".

No public compliance evidence has been recorded for this vendor yet. Do you know its DPA or subprocessor list? Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Cyber Resilience Act

Public signals that relate to the EU Cyber Resilience Act. They do not count towards the score. A missing line means "not found publicly".

We found none of these signals on the vendor's own site when we checked.

For products in scope of the CRA, CE marking is required from 11 December 2027; this cannot be checked yet.

Checked on October 9, 2026. What is the Cyber Resilience Act?

Digital sovereignty in Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity: Threat detection, endpoint protection, SIEM, vulnerability management. In this category the choice of vendor determines who has legal access to your data, where that data lives and how easily you can switch later.

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