My 2023 review: spreading our wings, full-speed ahead, and forever on the up and up!…

Once again, we’re nearing the end of a year: our planet Earth is completing its yearly cycle around the sun (and that’s a little under a billion kilometers, btw (I’ve just looked that up on the internet). But the main thing for us now is finishing off this year of 2023 as merrily as we possibly can – while looking forward to a positive, confident 2024. But there’s just one last thing I must do before midnight on New Year’s Eve, and that’s come up with my review-report on the outgoing year…

So what’s been most important of all during 2023? I think that that, for sure, has to be our continued ability not only to withstand the ongoing geopolitical s***storm we’ve no control over – but to up our skills and adeptness in conducting global business in spite of it. Oh yes!

But it wasn’t all work, work, work. There were also plenty of tourisms for me personally throughout the year, which I’ll surely get to in this review. But for now – just a photo to set the (positive) tone: of Mount Rinjani, Indonesia, at dawn, with the shadow of a perfect-cone volcano on the horizon behind it:

But, back to the geopolitical situation again. Because of it, our business in North America and some (but not all) European countries has taken a hit; however, that hit was practically fully compensated for by strong development of our product line and, correspondingly, growth in Russia, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa. Meanwhile in Asia it’s been swings and roundabouts: in some countries the figures are down, while in others they’re up. As a result, overall, worldwide – not bad! Sure, the going’s still tough of late – in some regions it’s painful and unfair – but we carry on, regardless, despite everything! Hurray!…

All righty, let’s get into some details. First, as per, some of the main statistics for the year…

Aviation

Flights: 65. That’s more than in 2022, but still way down on my usual pre-covid 100+ flights per year. I was up in the air around 240 hours. Airlines used most: Aeroflot (12); Qatar Airways (8); Turkish Airlines (4).

Airlines used for the first time: Ethiopian Airlines, Safarilink (Kenya), Citilink (Indonesia), Shanghai Airlines, Eurowings (Germany).

Countries

Countries traveled to (at least once): 17 Belarus (twice), Belgium, China (twice), France, Germany, Indonesia , Italy, Japan (twice), Kenya, Malaysia, Nepal, Saudi Arabia, Seychelles, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand (twice), UAE (twice).

Out of the above list of 17, first visits: Belarus and Kenya, which bring my total number of countries of the world visited to 104.

Overall, 2023 was an East Asian year – just like 2022 was a Middle Eastern year.

Cities and hotels

This year – in a matter of hours soon to be last year – I visited 25 cities, while I spent the night in 56 hotels (20+ of which – exclusively for tourism). Sure, that’s plenty of places and plenty of hotels and, accordingly – plenty of places were checked out; random example: Kenyan savanna with zebras! ->

Exhibitions, conferences, and other media activities

I took part in 30+ offline events (and several online), and was interviewed or gave speeches up on stage also 30+ times (including lectures at universities). Hardly hero – by-far not zero either. But what can I say? -> PR activities are down overall compared to the good old days…

Media highlights worth mentioning separately

✅ Our Global Partner Conference

✅ Our Cyber Immunity Conference, St. Petersburg

✅ Our press event in Bali, Indonesia, for the APAC region

✅ Our traditional yearly Industrial Cybersecurity Conference in sunny Sochi

✅ SAS–2023 – back in offline format, finally!

✅ Our 25^th/26^th b-day bash in Zavidovo in the Moscow Region. All day and most of the night partying – hard!

✅ The 26^th St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (where, among lots of other things, we signed a partnership agreement with the Bolshoi Theater)

✅ The CIPR Conference in Nizhny Novgorod (a very necessary and very useful event)

More must-mentions

✅ For the first time in several years we opened a new regional office and also a Transparency Center (as part of our Global Transparency Initiative) – this time in Saudi Arabia

✅ We discovered Triangulation – a highly professional, super-complex targeted attack using Apple mobile devices. iPhones and iPads invincible? Forget it!

✅ Our (unaudited) financial results for 2022. Yes, even in tough times – we’re not afraid to be transparent

Key product releases in 2023

B2C

✅ We completed the global launch of our new Kaspersky Standard/Plus/Premium subscriptions, and added new features: notifications of digital identity theft and personal data leaks – including on the darknet, protection from crypto-scams and phishing, plus performance tools

✅ Kaspersky Password Manager has been improved, with new functions like the creation of verification codes for two-factor authentication

✅Our caller-ID and spam-call blocker, Kaspersky Who Calls, has been complemented with ID and call-blocking functionality for WhatsApp (so far only in Russia and Indonesia; more regions to come)

✅ We launched the SubsCrab mobile app, which tracks subscriptions and controls payment schedules, among lots of other things

B2В

✅ One of the most important releases for the global audience in 2023 was that of our Kaspersky XDR (Extended Detection & Response) open platform. It forms the basis of our cybersecurity ecosystem – into which are plugged both our products and those of our partners. We also published for public access our Kaspersky UIF library so that partners can easily integrate with the platform and build their own user interfaces and services for it

✅ We launched Kaspersky SD-WAN in some countries. This is the first step toward a more global project – creation of the SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) ecosystem, which helps businesses optimize their outlays on IT infrastructure

✅ We had our first release of Kaspersky Container Security

✅ We launched an MDR service in Saudi Arabia to support regional clients

Special mention: KasperskyOS developments

✅ The first commercial release of Kaspersky IoT Secure Gateway 100. For the story of how it all started – go here

✅ An agreement with the Chinese company Centerm, which began shipping KasperskyOS-based “thin client” software products – so far to China, Asia and Europe

✅ I finally ditched my Nokia push-button mobile phone – because I’ve upgraded to a KOS-based smart phone

***

I’m certain that KasperskyOS is our future. And my gut tells me that the watershed moment may come as early as some time next year; accordingly I’ve got fingers crossed in eager anticipation!

But, what does my gut know that we don’t? Well, obviously it’s been consulting magical Chinese numerology! ->

If we factorize the number 2024, we find that it’s a product of the numbers: 2³ * 11 * 23 (= 2024). Furthermore, 2³ = 8, and eight in Chinese means wealth and good luck. 23: two + three = five, and that means “I” (as in – “me”) in Chinese. And 11 is both the day and month of KasperskyOS (the project to create a secure operating system of the future); that is – its birthday falls on 11.11. Thus, the numerological prediction for next year is the guaranteed financial success of our Cyber Immune operating system. Hurray! :)

Awards:

✅ The German testing laboratory AV-TEST granted our products top marks as the best and most helpful in the fight against ransomware and data stealers

✅ For the second year running our Kaspersky EDR Expert (KEDRE) was awarded the status of Strategic Leader in AV-Comparatives’ wholly serious Endpoint Prevention and Response test, and also top marks in SE Labs’ Advanced Security (EDR) test

✅ Our corporate products for both SMB and Enterprise had their effectiveness in protecting business against malware confirmed in tests by SE Labs

✅ AV-Comparatives awarded our endpoint protection a 100% effectiveness level in its “anti-tampering” certification

December’s tests are still under way; I’ll let you know the results when they’re in (and we’re expecting yet more top marks, naturally!)…

Patents

In 2023 we received 104 patents (26 in the U.S.A., 17 in Russia, 41 in China, and 14 in the EU and other countries), and filed applications for a further 47. Our most patented solutions included those related to Cyber Immunity (KasperskyOS), Kaspersky MLAD, and machine learning technology for uncovering phishing and computer security incidents.

Tourisms

You know by now that I can’t be without my multiple adventure tourisms throughout a year, and 2023 was no exception.

Out of all of them, choosing which was the best is a toughie; therefore, I’ll just go through them all – in reverse chronological order…

☑️ October: lesser-known (especially to non-Chinese), China-2023 vacation. Several AAAAA&KKKKK-rated (natural and historical) places of tourist interest, plus plenty of miles traveled upon China’s outstanding highways getting between them all, made all the (much) better by our deft timing of our trip: right after a Golden Week when the whole country takes the week off and flocks to said places of interest: they were mostly empty besides us!

In all, six Chinese uniquenesses were visited, walked around, snapped and generally ecstatically relished:

Enshi Grand Canyon and its nearby cliffs and crazy cliff-hugging paths
Pingshan Canyon
Wulingyuan (featuring Avatar Hallelujah Mountain)
Tianmen Mountain (with its enormous natural arch)
The sacred Mount Fanjing
Mount Langshan and its super-thin crevices

☑️ Kenyan safari (not the big-game hunting kind; the modern, wildlife-friendly kind – just in case you were wondering). More ecstasy – pure and simple. I’d done a safari in Tanzania before, but it was only in Kenya’s Maasai Mara where I got to witness the unique Great Migration of wildebeest and other beasts.

☑️ Trek up to the South Base Camp of Mount Everest, Nepal. This was a toughie, and, of course, the all-important “done” check-mark was duly procured; however, once we made it to the Base Camp I was most disappointed: the weather was so bad (low cloud, snow), that we saw practically nothing up there – a few tents and that’s about it. No Everest towering over us, no OMG-views all around. Oh well – never mind: we’ll just have to go back and hope for better weather – like in this pic (clearly not ours!) ->

☑️ We finally made it up to the top of Mount Rinjani, which we didn’t manage to do last time we were scaling Indonesian volcanoes (around New Year, 2018). This was out-of-this-world fantastic, but it sure wasn’t the promised “easy hike”; just the opposite: it was the toughest volcano-climb I’ve ever known!

☑️ Wholly unexpected: the beautiful islands and cliffs near Phuket in Thailand (pics only; Russian text).

☑️ I saw the Northern Lights for the first time! They’re just as bright and colorful as in the photos – at least, they were to me. Turns out the other members of the party I was with viewed the night skies differently: they didn’t see the bright green fluorescence – just white with a light smattering of green. When they later saw my snaps they were fairly amazed.

Next – a few brief mind-blowers…

This year my mind was truly blown from:

☑️ Snooker – high up in the Himalayas!

☑️ I saw a ternary computer for the first time. Oh, how digital history could have taken a such a different course…

☑️ I was blown away by Huawei’s head office.

☑️ A private tour of the Bolshoi Theater.

☑️ As mentioned, Chinese highways.

Personal reveals

☑️ I shared my take on how to survive certain crisis situations (at work – not up a volcano, in a jungle, or at either of the two Poles:).
☑️ I went through some of my more bizarre/extreme/exotic adventures (an ongoing series – to be continued!) Part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7.

Cities – including some for the first time

☑️ Orenburg, Gai