Kaspersky brings you the smell of malware

When your job is writing about technology you get used to receiving the somewhat off the wall ways companies come up with to promote their products.

Kaspersky's latest endeavour though had us scrambling for the calendar to check whether it was April 1st, as the company is launching a fragrance. Described as 'threatening yet provocative' the rather disturbingly named Threat de Toilette comes, like all the best scents, in pour femme and pour homme versions.

"Fear awakens our senses," says David Emm, Kaspersky Lab's principal security researcher and face of the new scent. "The men and women who wear Threat de Toilette understand today's online threats and protect themselves against them. Fear is no longer felt only in the physical world -- it's all around us in our connected lives too and we need to make sure we're constantly protected."

So far so gimmicky, but the launch in London's trendy Soho does have some serious points to make about information security. Scents in the range include; Ransom (reassuringly expensive), Social Enginoir, Mal-wear, and Phish.

In an interesting twist, UK beauty blogger Scarlett London (no, us neither) gave her take on cyber security, "I don't feel that we discuss cyber-security enough -- or that enough attention is given to it, especially considering how much of our time and life is spent online. My business and livelihood is based online -- so if a hacker was to be able to get in and steal content or wipe files from my computer, channel or feeds, it would severely disrupt my business and my ability to grow my channel. My audiences' experience would also be disrupted because they wouldn't have any new content to watch."

So, in the future expect to buy your fragrances from your IT security company -- we look forward to the launch of Symantec Scents and Panda Pongs -- and don't forget to pop down to the beauty salon for your cyber security advice. It's a funny old world...