Kaspersky Interactive Protection Simulation

What is included in Kaspersky Interactive Protection Simulation?

Team based simulation – Teams run a simulated company under live cyberattack.
Trainer led delivery – Certified facilitator runs briefing, gameplay and structured debriefing.
Live and online – On site event or remote delivery via Microsoft Teams.
Sector scenarios – Predefined storylines for thirteen verticals plus a newer IT scenario.
Attack customisation – Combine different attack types and counts inside one scenario.
Important – No agent, no console and no detection technology included.

What are the main benefits of Kaspersky Interactive Protection Simulation?

Kaspersky Interactive Protection Simulation, usually shortened to KIPS, is a facilitated team exercise from the Kaspersky Security Awareness portfolio rather than protection software. Every session is run by a certified trainer, either on site or online through WebEx or Microsoft Teams, so there is no management console and nothing is installed on company devices.

Board level engagement – Shows management how attacks cut revenue, not only risk.
Cross team coordination – Puts CISO, IT and business managers at one table.
Short time block – Two and a half hours including the closing debriefing.
Large group reach – Online format seats up to 1000 participants simultaneously.
Session analytics – Records team decisions and compares them with earlier sessions.
Current attack scenarios – Deepfake fraud, supply chain compromise and wiper malware included.

Which company size is Kaspersky Interactive Protection Simulation suitable for?

The decisive factor is headcount, not turnover. A KIPS session is played by competing teams of three to four people, so an organisation needs roughly twenty participants before the exercise produces the comparison and discussion it is built around. Below that number, an online awareness platform delivers more per franc spent.

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Does Kaspersky Interactive Protection Simulation meet the requirements of Swiss cybersecurity legislation?

The revised Information Security Act obliges operators of critical infrastructure, including energy and drinking water suppliers, transport companies and cantonal and communal administrations, to report cyberattacks to the Federal Office for Cybersecurity (BACS) within 24 hours of discovery. Most SMEs outside those sectors are not covered, so the first step is checking whether your organisation falls inside the scope at all. Where it does, the 24-hour clock is an organisational problem before it is a technical one, because someone has to recognise the incident, judge its severity and decide to report it while the attack is still running. KIPS rehearses exactly that decision chain under time pressure, with management and IT in the same room, which is the part most incident plans fail on in practice. It does not detect the incident, does not produce telemetry, and does not generate or submit the report to BACS, so it supplements a monitoring and response setup rather than replacing any part of it. This text is not legal advice; whether your organisation is subject to the reporting obligation should be clarified with qualified legal counsel.

Does Kaspersky Interactive Protection Simulation meet the requirements of European cybersecurity legislation?

No product creates NIS 2 compliance, because the directive addresses organisational risk management, not software features. NIS 2 requires covered entities to put in place risk-analysis and incident-handling procedures, business continuity and crisis management, supply chain security, and basic cyber hygiene practices and security training, and it also requires members of management bodies to follow training on cybersecurity risk. KIPS maps to the training and crisis-rehearsal categories: it puts executives and IT staff through a simulated incident together, and the newer scenarios cover supply chain compromise and third-party access, which are directly named measure areas. It does not deliver any of the technical measures the directive expects, so it contributes nothing towards access control, multi-factor authentication, encryption, vulnerability handling, logging or asset inventory. Treat it as evidence of management-level training activity, not as a control in your risk-treatment plan.

What should you know about official assessments of Kaspersky?

The German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) issued a warning against the use of Kaspersky antivirus software on 15 March 2022. It remains in force and, since the German NIS 2 implementation act took effect on 6 December 2025, is now issued under Section 13 BSIG rather than Section 7. In 2024 the United States Department of Commerce prohibited the sale and distribution of Kaspersky software in the US market. Kaspersky rejects the BSI warning as unjustified and states that it was not based on an objective technical analysis of its software, pointing to its transparency measures and third-party audits. Two distinctions matter for this specific product: the BSI warning concerns antivirus software that runs with deep system privileges, whereas KIPS is a facilitated exercise with no agent on your systems, and neither measure is a Swiss one. In practice this affects buyers with public-sector contracts, buyers whose customers impose vendor-origin restrictions in supplier questionnaires, and any organisation with US procurement ties. For a private Swiss company with no such obligations, the decision is yours to make on its merits.

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Does Kaspersky Interactive Protection Simulation help with security questionnaires from large customers?

Partly, and only in a narrow band of questions. It answers items asking whether the organisation conducts security awareness activity, whether management and executives receive cybersecurity training, and whether incident response is exercised rather than only documented; online sessions record team decisions and benchmark them against previous runs, which gives you something concrete to attach. It answers nothing else. Questions on endpoint protection, patch levels, encryption of mobile devices, multi-factor authentication, logging and retention, backup testing, vulnerability management and certification status all remain open, and a KIPS session provides no per-employee training record of the kind auditors usually ask for. To close the training-record gap without changing vendor, the Kaspersky Automated Security Awareness Platform from the same Security Awareness portfolio covers all-staff micro-lessons, phishing simulation and completion reporting, which is normally cheaper than combining two suppliers. The technical questions need actual protection, patch and encryption products and cannot be answered by any training product.

What is the difference between KIPS Live and KIPS Online?

The decisive difference is how many people you can involve and from where. KIPS Live runs as a single on-site event for up to 100 participants in one room, hosted by a trainer and an assistant, while KIPS Online is led remotely through WebEx or Microsoft Teams and supports up to 300 teams with up to 1000 participants from any location. Both formats run two and a half hours including the closing discussion, and they can be combined so that remote teams join an on-site event. Language handling differs too: a live event runs in one chosen language for everyone, whereas online teams select the game interface language themselves.

Which limitations should you know before buying?

The most common misunderstanding is scope: KIPS protects nothing. There is no agent, no scanning engine, no management console and no detection, so it sits alongside your existing endpoint, server and mail protection rather than replacing any of it, and buyers who expected a security suite return for a second purchase. The second constraint is people: sessions are played by competing teams of three to four, so an organisation with a handful of staff cannot run the exercise as designed, and every session needs a certified facilitator from Kaspersky or an authorised partner rather than being self-service. A live event also depends on customer-provided infrastructure, including room, projector, sound and internet access, with one tablet per team, and creating a fully custom scenario is charged separately. On regional availability, Kaspersky products cannot be sold or distributed in the United States following the 2024 Department of Commerce decision, and the German BSI warning against Kaspersky antivirus software affects procurement decisions in Germany; neither restriction originates in Switzerland.

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Frequently asked questions about Kaspersky Interactive Protection Simulation

Do we need Kaspersky protection products to run KIPS?

No. KIPS is a simulation exercise played on a game interface, not an add-on to a protection product, so it runs regardless of which security vendor your company uses. Nothing is installed on your endpoints or servers.

Who should take part in a session?

Teams of three to four work best when each one mixes management, engineering and IT security roles, because the exercise is built around the friction between those three perspectives. Participants can come from the same department or from different ones, and they do not need to know each other beforehand.

Can we run KIPS sessions ourselves?

Kaspersky offers a train-the-trainer arrangement for organisations that want to train many people across multiple departments or sites. It covers internal use of the training programme, the materials, access to the KIPS game server and instruction for your own programme leaders.

Which attack scenarios are available?

Predefined scenarios cover thirteen verticals, among them bank, corporation, telecom, transportation, airport, power station, water plant, local public administration and SMB, and an IT-sector scenario was added more recently. The IT scenario includes a deepfake executive fraud, a binary backdoor supply chain attack, a trusted relationship attack through third-party VPN access and a wiper based on leaked Babuk code.