The U.S. Treasury Department today announced sanctions against 12 executives at Kaspersky Lab Inc., a Russian antivirus maker.

The sanctions are being rolled out by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC. A day earlier, the Commerce Department banned Kaspersky from selling its antivirus software and other products in the U.S. The move followed an investigation in which officials determined that the company poses an unacceptable risk to U.S. national security.

Moscow-based Kaspersky sells cybersecurity software to consumers and businesses. According to the Commerce Department, the company’s products are used by 400 million individuals worldwide along with about 270,000 organizations. The agency founded that Kaspersky cooperates with Russian military and intelligence authorities in support of the Russian government’s cyber intelligence objectives.

The sanctions that Treasury announced today apply to a dozen of the company’s executives. The group includes six members of Kaspersky’s C-suite, four of whom also sit on its board. The other sanctioned individuals include executive vice presidents and other senior managers.

According to the Treasury Department, property and interests in property of the sanctioned executives are now blocked and must be reported to OFAC. The same applies to entities such as businesses that are majority-owned by the designated individuals. Furthermore, OFAC has prohibited transactions involving the sanctioned executives from being carried out stateside or by U.S. individuals.

“Today’s action against the leadership of Kaspersky Lab underscores our commitment to ensure the integrity of our cyber domain and to protect our citizens against malicious cyber threats,” said Brian Nelson, Treasury under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence. “The United States will take action where necessary to hold accountable those who would seek to facilitate or otherwise enable these activities.”

The move comes a day after the Commerce Department blocked the sale of Kaspersky software in the U.S.

The ban will prohibit the company from issuing updates to existing installations of its antivirus after September 29. Additionally, the Commerce Department has added three Kaspersky-affiliated entities known as AO Kaspersky Lab, OOO Kaspersky Group and Kaspersky Ltd. to its Entity List of organizations that pose a national security risk. The restrictions were rolled out over concerns that the company’s software could be used to steal sensitive data from the computers on which it’s installed.

Installing Kaspersky applications on systems operated by the federal government was already prohibited prior to this week’s rollout of the new sanctions. In 2017, the Department of Homeland Security issued a directive requiring federal agencies to remove the company’s software from their infrastructure.

Photo: Michael Pick/Flickr