Kaspersky Working on Security-Focused OS for Nuclear Plants

Kaspersky Lab (News - Alert), a Russian anti-virus software company, is in the process of developing a secure operating system designed to be run on computers inside nuclear power plants, energy supply and transportation control facilities, as well as financial and telecommunications systems. The OS will be able to block sophisticated pieces of malware — Stuxnet, for example, an exploit that would spread via Windows machines, targeting Siemens (News - Alert) industrial software and equipment.

It isn't really a fully featured operating system, though, like Windows or OS X, but is instead meant to run on top of existing platforms.

"We are in talks with certain governments about this and it will take time, but we are not in to compete with Microsoft (News - Alert). It will to provide another layer of protection from major exploits, disgruntled employees and attackers," said Eugene Kaspersky, CEO and co-founder of Kaspersky Lab. "Our system is highly tailored, developed for solving a specific narrow task, and not intended for playing Half-Life on, editing your vacation videos, or blathering on social media."

In fact, as Kaspersky went on to explain, the OS will by design be unable to carry out any behind the scenes or undeclared activity. As such, it will be very difficult to execute third-party code, run unauthorized applications or break into the system.

In other words, the Kaspersky OS will provide a secure environment that works in between the important parts of industrial systems, isolating malware and stopping it from reaching critical areas of a system.

In other news, Kaspersky Lab recently teamed up with Facebook to improve the social network's security, while offering Facebook (News - Alert) users with free six-month subscriptions to Kaspersky's security and threat management solution, Kaspersky PURE Total Security or Kaspersky Security for Mac.

The anti-virus software company also recently extended its technology licensing agreement with Lamantine Software, which powers Kaspersky Password Manager and the password management component in other Kaspersky products.