3000% growth.

We do reeeaaally interesting work.

We protect users, build a new secure future, and chase cyber-villains the world over. At the same time, the ‘landscape’ is constantly changing, meaning there’s never a single moment we might get bored.

Yes, ‘digital’ these days penetrates even the most unlikely, remote and conservative areas of activity of Homo sapiens, and, alas, the greasy fingers of the computer underground and also the cyber-war-mongers are right there with it up to no good. In the early 2000s, I’d joke up on stages around the world about ‘smart’ [sic] refrigerators one day DDoS’ing coffee machines. Fast forward 15 years, and it’s a reality. So you can see why, in the 30 years I’ve been doing this, I’ve never once been bored ).

Threats are changing – and so is our business. For example, did you know that last year sales of our industrial infrastructure solutions increased by 162%? And total growth of our NON-antivirus segment amounted to 55%? Or that we’re the only major cybersecurity company to create our own specialized operating system based on secure architecture? And that we’re already implementing it with gusto in diverse fields such as the Internet of Things, telecoms and the automotive industry? Or how many interesting projects our Growth Center helped survive their crucial first months of life? For example: our Polys blockchain platform for online voting; protection against drones; and the Verisium IoT system for genuine-product authentication?

But it’s not just our technologies and products that are changing. Our traditional business models are changing too. ‘Box moving’ and retail business are being swallowed up by ‘digital’, enterprise projects are becoming all the more customized (attracting large broad-competency system integrators), and the SMB segment is practically migrating en masse up into the cloud.

And then there’s the cosmic rise of our xSP business – sales of cyber-protection for subscribers of most anything that’s online, be they services of telecoms or internet providers; online banking, insurance, and financial services… even games communities. And this is a very promising market segment, simply because, as per the ancient (!) truism, ‘who owns the traffic owns the customer’. What’s more, customers get a useful service at a special price, the operator takes its margin, and we take our profit. Everybody wins ). So, now do you ‘get’ the title to this post?…

…In six years, our xSP business has grown a full 3000%, and is now worth more than $30 million! That’s around 10% of our global B2C sales! Oh my gross-sales-figures! We work with more than 500 partners around the world on xSP, including such large global and regional operators as Telecom Italia, Orange, Sony Network Communications, Linktel, UOL, and IIJ. What we do is offer a ‘tasty’ margin, gladly make white label versions of our products, integrate them with the automation platforms (for example, CloudBlue (aka – Odin) and the NEC Cloud Brokerage Suite), conduct joint marketing activities, and set up the technical support. But it’s not just a ‘trick’ we use to get more profit: if our technologies and products at bottom weren’t the best in the world – as proven repeatedly, constantly, in independent tests – I’m not sure xSPs would be giving us so much business.

Still on xSPs, just recently we had our Kaspersky xSP Summit in Rome. This is our annual event for partners, and this year we had guests from 32 countries in attendance, including from Brazil, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the U.S.A. We summed up the year, chatted, talked about future technologies and products, discussed the prospects for joint projects, brainstormed, and exchanged practical experience. In short – business as usual, plus a recharge of the batteries for the next 12 months up until the next summit.

The highlight of the program of the summit was our up and coming ideas with promotion via xSP channels in mind. Some of the products are truly unique and promise users a new level of cybersecurity, while for partners there’s a very good profit. To me, the best topics of the summit were those on: the Internet of Things and protection of smart cities; blockchain security; privacy audits; and also the newest addition to our arsenal: Antidrone. Indeed, our business is waaaay beyond mere antivirus these days (just in case you haven’t noticed:).

But, what have antidrone, blockchain and smart cities got to do with xSP, you might ask. Well, over recent years the channel has markedly changed, enlarged… snowballed: today work on critical infrastructure and large state projects is managed by national-level service providers.

We also showcased various partners’ devices that run on our technologies: kit from Zyxel, D-Link, SAXA, Stormshield (Airbus), Allied Telesys and Advantech, for example. With projects such as these, it isn’t an overstatement when we say that K has been protecting the Internet of Things for 10 years already. It’s just that 10 years ago no one realized they were early Internet-of-Things devices (the term hadn’t been thought up back then!). On the whole, our tech is used by 120+ vendors around the world – in all sorts of different segments.

Perhaps the next ‘hit’ in our xSP line-up will be Safe Kids. Demand for a product to keep kids safe online is very high of late, while our product that does just that happens to be one of the best products in the world for the purpose, working on both desktop computers (Windows and Mac) and mobile devices (Android and iOS).

Ok. That’s the business part of this post done with. Now, to make things a little more entertaining – some on the road again pics of mine on the way to the summit.

We took the ‘direct’ flight from Dubai to Rome. But that doesn’t mean ‘direct’ as in ‘the shortest route’ by any means: it weaves around various geopolitical hotspots, as do planes on other routes it seemed – as could be seen by the rather busy skies:

That looks like Mount Ararat:

And here’s Rome – a very green city:

It has quite a few downsides, but its greenness is undeniably upside:

The view from my hotel room:

Sunset in Rome. Ahhhh )

https://www.instagram.com/p/B4uc-yKgXpq/

My portion of tourism was at the Galleria Borghese:

I wasn’t that impressed, to be frank. Bernini – of course, oh yes: incredible sculptures – a true master. Perhaps it was just that the gallery was rather small? Still, the Galleria Borghese sure can name drop: Caravaggio, Raphael, Rubens…

That’s all from Rome folks. Back soon!…