According to Ian Kilpatrick, Wick Hill's chairman, his company has distributed Kaspersky Lab security software in the UK and Germany for many years.

The deal, he said, signifies an increased investment in Kaspersky Lab for the distributor and an increased commitment to the company.

"We think that this deal provides excellent opportunities Kaspersky Lab anti-virus resellers, and also for Wick Hill. We are very excited by this opportunity to further grow our Kaspersky Lab business", he said.

"Our Kaspersky Lab reseller partners have been gaining business and market share against competitive workstation and server security vendors. This deal gives us even more resources to support them."

To ensure a smooth transition for all of C-Media's Kaspersky Lab resellers, Kilpatrick said that Wick Hill has set up a special sales team and will be working closely with resellers over the coming months.

"We have invested in finance, marketing and staff resources to grow business for and with our existing Kaspersky Lab channel partners, alongside the new resellers, and we plan to continue to deliver strong sales and margin growth to them in the coming years", he said.

Kilpatrick added that it was an exciting time to be partnering with Kaspersky Lab.

He noted that Kaspersky Lab's technical excellence, its cost-effectiveness, low overhead on workstations, together with the speed of threat response, are all being increasingly recognised by customers and market penetration is growing fast.

Over at Kaspersky Lab UK, Malcolm Tuck, the firm's managing director, said his firm's business has grown by 86% during the first half of 2009.

"We have also increased our reseller base by over 20%. Our technology and expertise is well recognised", he said.