Security for everyone - Reviewing Kaspersky Secure Connection VPN

When you install an internet security suite on your computer, you might think that you are done with securing it. Unfortunately, that is not always true, as there are other types of security risks that most security suites don't protect you from. VPN services add a layer of security and anonymity since they protect your internet connection by letting you connect through their secure VPN servers, using encrypted connections that cannot be easily intercepted by others. Kaspersky is one of the most well-known antivirus providers in the world, and now they have a VPN service too. Let's take a look at their VPN solution, named Kaspersky Secure Connection. Read this review and see what it has to offer:

What Kaspersky Secure Connection has to offer

Kaspersky Secure Connection is made by Kaspersky Lab, a Russian multinational cybersecurity and antivirus provider headquartered in Moscow, Russia and operated by a holding company in the United Kingdom. It is one of the most renowned cybersecurity companies in the world and it has been in business since 1997. In the last few years there were some reports about the company allegedly having ties with the Russian government or the military, and currently, they are not authorized to do business with the U.S. government. Still, being a Russian company, this makes Kaspersky Secure Connection one of the few VPN providers that have servers in Russia.

Kaspersky Secure Connection is available in three different plans, one of them, Basic Protection, being free. This plan has its limitations, as there is a daily data limit of 200 MB and it is impossible to select a server to connect to, it is chosen automatically for you.

The Premium Protection plan removes all these limitations and can be purchased in a monthly ($4.99 per month) or yearly ($29.99 per year) subscription. Both variants offer protection for up to five devices simultaneously.

Kaspersky Secure Connection is available on both desktop and mobile devices. The range of supported operating systems includes Windows XP, Windows Vista, up to Windows 10, Mac OS X 10.11 or higher and Android 4.1 or higher. The application is not available for iOS-based Apple mobile devices like iPhones or iPads, which is a significant downside. Also, there is no Linux version or one that could be installed on a router to protect your whole home WiFi network.

The VPN service offered by Kaspersky is available worldwide, with some exceptions, since Kaspersky Secure Connection cannot be installed in Belarus, China, Iran, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates.

Regardless whether you buy a monthly or a yearly subscription, you will have unlimited traffic, don't need an account for the purchase and the application won't log your traffic. If you would like to try its features before buying, you can use Kaspersky Secure Connection freely with a daily data limit of 200MB. Also, Kaspersky Lab offers a 30-day money back guarantee, if you decide to purchase their VPN service.

Regarding global VPN coverage, Kaspersky Secure Connection offers servers in Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Republic of Ireland, Russia, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, the United States of America, Ukraine and the United Kingdom. This is one of the lowest number of available servers for the VPN clients we have reviewed so far. However, the most popular locations are present, as is Russia, which is rare in other VPN solutions.

VPN being a privacy-related service, it would be great to be able to pay for the subscription with Bitcoins or other cryptocurrencies, thus remaining truly anonymous. But one can only use a credit card, PayPal or wire transfer to buy a subscription from Kaspersky.

Download and installation

Downloading and installing Kaspersky Secure Connection on Windows is an easy process. First, you need to download the 2.25 MB setup file, called ksec18.0.0.405aen_12213.exe. The filename will change with subsequent versions.

The installation of the application is as simple as launching the executable you have downloaded, pressing the Install button and waiting for the installation to finish. To install the app, you need administrative privileges and an active internet connection.

Also, for it to function properly, Kaspersky Secure Connection might ask you to allow the installation of virtual network drivers (Kaspersky Security Data Escort Adapter). If asked, choose Yes to allow the installation; otherwise, the application will not be able to work.

Note that if you have other VPN software installed, the virtual network adapters might conflict, thus making one or both VPN applications unusable. It is recommended to have only a single VPN client installed on your Windows computer at any given time.

Our first impression of Kaspersky Secure Connection is mixed: there is a low number of VPN servers to connect to, but the most popular locations are there, including Russia, which is rare to find in other VPN products. Downloading and installing the application is a simple procedure, but you cannot buy a subscription with Bitcoins or other cryptocurrencies. It's a good thing that there is a free version available and you also have the 30-day money back guarantee. However, there is no iOS version, which might be a deal breaker for some users.

Using Kaspersky Secure Connection on Windows

When you launch the application, you won't immediately see its main window, only an icon in the notification tray. You can click it to connect to a VPN server, or to open the application window.

The main window has a simple layout: if you want to connect to a VPN server quickly, you just have to click the big slider button in the middle.

The application will now show that the VPN connection is in progress.

As soon as the connection has been established, the slider turns green and you are told that your connection is secured, meaning that you are connected to a VPN server. If you want to disconnect, just click the slider again.

By default, Kaspersky Secure Connection connects to the fastest VPN server available, depending on your location. This might be a good choice if you don't need to be connected to a server from a particular country, and only need protection. The location of the automatically selected server is visible right below the connection button after you are connected.

If you want to connect to a server in a particular country, you can click the name of the pre-selected server (or the Select automatically label if you're not yet connected) and the Choose location window will open, listing all the available servers. Click the one you need and then click the connect button. If you're already connected to a virtual server, you will instantly connect to the new one, as soon as you select it.

Kaspersky Secure Connection has a minimalistic and elegant interface, that is easy to use. Connecting to a VPN server takes only one click, and selecting another is also a quick process.

Go to the second page of this review to learn about the additional features offered by Kaspersky Secure Connection and the results it obtained in our performance benchmarks. You will also see our final verdict for this VPN product.

Extra features in Kaspersky Secure Connection

In Windows, Kaspersky Secure Connection offers an additional feature, that lets you manage how the app treats different WiFi networks, and what it should do if you connect to a new and unsecured WiFi network. This automatization feature can be configured in the application's Settings window.

Check the "Apply general rules on connection to Wi-Fi networks" checkbox and click the Settings button below.

By clicking "Manage known Wi-Fi networks" you can first set what Kaspersky Secure Connection should do when you connect to an already known WiFi network: enable the secure VPN connection or ignore the network and keep the VPN connection turned off.

You can also enable a notification if there was an error establishing a secure connection. Also, you can choose what the application should do when it connects to a new WiFi network that is considered insecure:

• prompt to enable a secure VPN connection based on Kaspersky's recommendations
• always prompt to enable a secure VPN connection
• enable the secure VPN connection automatically
• ignore such networks and leave the secure connection turned off

After clicking on "Select Wi-Fi networks to treat as insecure," you can also define which networks are to be considered unsafe, as shown below.

Lastly, this feature also allows you to select a particular VPN server to connect in these cases and also enable a notification when such an automatic connection is established.

Kaspersky Secure Connection has a single extra feature besides the basic VPN protection: it lets you set up automatic secure connections for each WiFi network you connect to. It's not much, but it is useful.

Advanced settings and configuration

Besides the additional feature of automatically enabling secure VPN connections for specific WiFi networks, Kaspersky Secure Connection doesn't have much more to offer. In its Settings window, you can set the application to automatically run at your computer startup and optionally to automatically connect to a VPN server once it has launched.

Additionally you can opt into the Kaspersky Security Network, which is said to offer optimal protection for users, and finally, there is a button that lets you restore notifications that you might have disabled.

Kaspersky Secure Connection doesn't have much to offer to advanced users, as it has no advanced settings to tinker with, only some basics to change.

Performance and speed

It should be noted that the only obvious downside of using a secure VPN connection is the loss of speed: since you are not connecting directly to the internet, but through another server, your connection will be inevitably slower. The big question is: how much slower? To check how much Kaspersky Secure Connection affects our internet connection's speed, we ran a couple of tests using the popular Speedtest.net service.

We were using Kaspersky Secure Connection on an internet connection that is advertised as having a speed of 100 Mbps for both download and upload. The screenshot below shows the rates measured by Speedtest.net before installing Kaspersky Secure Connection on our test computer. Although the speeds are not exactly what the ISP advertises, they are relatively close to 100 Mbps.

Next, we used Kaspersky Secure Connection to establish a VPN connection to a server that is located close to us, in Kiev, Ukraine. This was the fastest server suggested by the app. In this case, the download speed has dropped quite a lot, and the upload speed also decreased to half of what it was on a regular internet connection.

It's time to go a bit further: we chose a server that is still on the same continent - Germany, Europe. Both the download and upload speeds dropped even further, both being amongst the slowest speeds we have measured over VPN in Germany.

Now we wanted to know what speed we get if we connect through a server on a different continent, in the United States. There were no surprises here, both the download and upload speeds dropped to even lower levels, and the ping reply has increased significantly, but everything was still usable. Again, these were some of the slowest speeds we had over VPN in the USA.

Finally, we went all over to the other side of the world, since Japan is one of the furthest possible points from us. Again, no surprises: ping time increased considerably, download speed dropped to around 10 Mbps, and upload speed was around 13 Mbps. That's not much, but it's still usable for web browsing, and it is about the same speed you would get with any other VPN service.

Just like with any other VPN, both our download and upload speeds drop: this is normal since we are no longer directly connected to the internet. Unfortunately, in our tests, Kaspersky Secure Connection tended to provide lower speeds than other VPN providers that we have tested.

Default settings you might consider adjusting

Kaspersky Secure Connection doesn't require any advanced setup, and it doesn't even have many settings to change. In our opinion you should consider setting it up the following way:

• By default, the application starts up with your computer and connects to a VPN server. If you don't always need this, you might want to disable these two features, to make your Windows boot faster.
• You should enable the automatic application of general rules when connecting to WiFi networks
• We recommend enabling the secure connection automatically whenever you connect to an insecure WiFi network

Although Kaspersky Secure Connection doesn't have many settings to tinker with, it has a couple of features that let you set it up in a way that it will work almost entirely automatically.

Pros and cons

Kaspersky Secure Connection has the following positive features:

• It offers a clean, minimalistic and easy to use interface
• It has a free version, and money back guarantee
• Kaspersky promises that there is no traffic logging
• It is easy to automate secure VPN connections when connecting to different wireless networks
• It is one of the very few VPN services to provide servers in Russia

There are some downsides to this VPN service as well:

• It has a low number of VPN servers available
• There is no client for iOS devices
• Its VPN servers are slower than those of other providers
• You cannot pay in Bitcoins and payments will not be entirely anonymous
• It offers little regarding advanced features for knowledgeable users

Verdict

Kaspersky Secure Connection aims to be as simple and easy to use as possible - and it manages to do so in grand fashion. The user interface is fast and easy to understand, and nobody will have any issues getting used to it. Thanks to its automatization features, Kaspersky Secure Connection can be set up to take care of most of the trouble of connecting to VPN servers and securing your WiFi connections. However, there are also notable downsides, like no client for iOS devices, slower VPN servers than those we tested on other VPN providers, and a smaller number of VPN servers. Kaspersky Secure Connection is a good VPN product, that is very easy to use and configure. However, other VPN providers tend to offer more.