Problem with Calibre security certificate

Hi,
First a profile confession – I am new to Calibre, marginally computer literate and no programming skills.
My problem seems to be stemming from the site certificate on calibre-ebook.com which Windows says it cannot verify. Consequently whenever I open Calibre I get a message from Kapersky Web Antivirus asking that I continue (or close) then verify my choice: a time wasting procedure.
I have entered exceptions in Kapersky Web Antivirus to
https://code.calibre-ebook.com/
https://code.calibre-ebook.com/*
https://code.calibre-ebook.com/plugins/plugins.json.bz2
did not help
Worse I cannot connect to the plugins – new or update. These are the details of the Calibre message:

calibre, version 2.54.0
ERROR: Update Check Failed: Unable to reach the plugin index page.

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\dialogs\plugin_updater.py", line 434, in __init__
File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\dialogs\plugin_updater.py", line 61, in read_available_plugins
File "site-packages\calibre\utils\https.py", line 198, in get_https_resource_securely
File "httplib.py", line 1216, in connect
File "ssl.py", line 350, in wrap_socket
File "ssl.py", line 566, in __init__
File "ssl.py", line 788, in do_handshake
SSLError: [SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed (_ssl.c:581)

If the answer is already on the forum I apologise I could not find it. I got plenty of answers by searching the web but they are for programmers in Python, beyond my ability to manage.
I would be grateful for your help.