Hi everyone!

I’d always dreamed of one day walking across the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco – and recently, I’m glad to report, that that dream came true! Traversing the Bay took about an hour (with plenty of stops to soak up the views and take some photos) – from south to north (where I met my fellow frequent travel partner T.T., who was also in a rental car).

More: Coming next – Muir Woods & Point Reyes..

Hi all!

Earlier today a very special visitor dropped by our office. The US Ambassador to Russia, the Honorable Michael A. McFaul, called in for an informal meeting – to chat among other things about US-Russian relations and the success of several Russian companies in the USA. He also took in the great, currently very snowy, panoramic view from my office window.

I found the Ambassador to be a charming individual, easy to talk to, and most pleasant to have an interesting conversation with. Our chat ended with our agreeing to continue friendly relations.

In astrology – squares are bad news. They represent conflict. (How or why I might know this I’ll not share with you here. Cough.) But in IT-industry analysis – squares are good. Real good! To get into one of four squares – ok, they like to call them quadrants – and especially the best of the four (leader/visionary) is no mean feat, so breaking and entering a square – especially leader/visionary – is all the more fantastic.

We are now in three such quadrants (actually, one quadrant, one “scape”, and one wave) – those of Gartner, IDC, and Forrester. All three have unanimously made us “leaders” in the class of corporate endpoint security! But this isn’t just the usual round of yet more medals being fastened to the old KL lapel. Oh no. We’ve received the honored “triple crown” from the three most respected international analytical agencies. Incidentally, this crown has only ever been worn by one other – our competitor with the soft spot for all things yellow. Well, now the triple crown is a nice shade of green.

IDC MarketScape (*)

More: see you in quadrants!… ->

In brief.

• Approximately 5% of home computers around the world are infected. That’s at least 50 million machines.
• We discovered this from our free Kaspersky Security Scan after analyzing requests to an “antivirus cloud”.
• We’re only talking about Windows PCs – we don’t know how many infected Macs and Linux machines there are out there.

Now for all the gory details.

So, just how many infected computers are there in the world right now (to within two or three parsecs)? It’s a pertinent question. And that’s just PCs; no Macs (quite a few of which are infected too). And let’s restrict it to just home users. In any case, it’s still interesting to know. What do you need to do to find out that sort of information? Well, a large selection of computers needs to be scanned for malware, and that’s a large selection in terms of geography as well as numbers. The antivirus tool not only needs to be good at catching viruses – it mustn’t conflict with other antivirus programs.

Well, we have just the thing – Kaspersky Security Scan (KSS).

More: KSS – a nifty little thing…

Day 6. Tales of the unexpected.

No expedition can be insured against unexpected surprises – be they unpleasant or otherwise.

And the South Island of New Zealand had quite a few in store for us. The first of these was announced to us while waiting to board the ferry at the car rental place. It turned out that getting to where we were headed and were to spend the night was totally out of the question. There’d been some torrential rain (more torrential than the norm, that is) causing villages to be washed away and a bridge brought down, while the road we needed to take was closed and was to remain so for several days. As a result we didn’t make it to the Franz Josef Glacier, which is where we were highly recommended to get to.

More: treks, floods and falls…

As some of you may have guessed from the title – this post is about encryption!

Actually, about the new full-disk and file-level encryption that are featured in our new corporate product.

Let me warn you now from the outset – there’ll be quite a bit of specific tech terminology and information in this post. I have tried to make it as minimally heavy and dull as possible. However, if the business of encryption will never manage to wet your whistle just a little, well, you can simply sack the idea right now before you begin – and learn all about the touristic treasures of New Zealand, for example :).

Soooo. Encryption:

More: re-rewind, context, background …

Day 3. Geothermality.

At last! The time has come to move onto the most interesting bit (at least, for me!) of NZ – of which there happens to be plenty.

Our route was planned thus: from underwhelm-ness, via mid-whelmness, and on to overwhelm-ness, along hundreds of miles of road surrounded on both sides by luxurious landscapes and a continuation of the inevitable – scads of sheep.

Our third day in NZ served up the following for our touristic pleasure: geysers, hot springs, cauldrons, pot holes, fumaroles, and other assorted volcanisms and geothermality – all unconditionally mandatory for visiting and studying more closely.

More: Geysers, volcanoes, a frying pan lake, and pancake rocks…

Ladies and gentlemen!

I’ve got some very good news! Well, at least, for some – particularly KL employees…

Our decade and a half of rented-office-space hopping has officially come to an end. Yep, we’ve finally done it – we’ve gone and bought an office building – rather, three. Well, better late than never, I guess. Anyway, just recently, the last of the last of the departments which were holding out at the old office (at Oktiyabrskoye Pole ([Red] October Field)) in the north-western suburbs of Moscow) have finally left it for good, turning up for work the next day at the new office, as can be seen in this photo – of our corporate admin elite and their favorite rubber plants:

Yup, we now have our own small piece of north-west Moscow, housing more than 1500 company HQ employees who’ve voluntarily signed up for careers in the fight against global cyberevil.

More: homes sweet homes…

Hi all!

Here’s the main course (actually the first of five main courses, followed by the desert :), to logically follow the starter (for those who missed it – here!).

More: getting there, fighting jetlag, caves, Middle-Earth & roads…

The system administrator – also sometimes affectionately known as the computer guy/girl – is a fairly well known figure at any company with more than a handful of employees. Stereotypes abound for sysadmins, and even sitcoms are made about the genre. But a lot of those are out-of-date and silly generalizations (my sysadmin @ HQ is neat and well-groomed – verging on the Hipster, with long blond fringe and side parting!)

So, really, just who is the sysadmin?

Right. All of us – computer users – are divided into three categories in terms of the answer to this question. To the first category, a sysadmin is an angry bearded devil, a computer whiz(ard), and a shaman – all rolled into one. The second category also attributes to sysadmins certain otherworldly traits, but strictly positive ones worthy of repeated bows plus a small gift on every worthy holiday (especially Sysadmin Day). Then there’s the third category of computer users – who don’t take either of these two views of sysadmins; these folks understand they’re just normal folks like the rest of us. And this third category includes the sysadmins themselves!

The shamanic work of sysadmins is eternally interesting: assembling brand new shiny kit, connecting it up with cables (or without them), and also commanding control over mice and keyboards – sometimes from thousands of miles away – and installing or reconfiguring software on a comp from the comfort of their own workplace. However, at the same time the work is hard, incredibly accountable, and, alas, in part thankless.

First of all there are the hundreds or thousands of users who all need to be kept happy – most of them clever-Dicks! Then there are the ever-increasing numbers and types of computers and other newfangled devices – all of which need attention and care. And of course there’s the jungle of software, cables and routers, problems with security… And to top it all off there are the ever-present budgetary constraints and dissatisfaction of the management and users. So it should come as no surprise that only sysadmins with iron psyches and healthy, cynical attitudes to life are the only ones who can cope with the job!

Perhaps the biggest headache for sysadmins is how to physically manage all the tasks under their remit. Installing Office here, correcting a setting in Outlook there, connecting a new comp in the neighboring building, and then getting through another 48 tasks scattered all over the office(s) is all going to result in nothing other than sysadmin burnout! Enter systems management to ease the burden…

The majority of routine operations for controlling a network can either be fully automated, or at least performed remotely, without excessive movement about the office. Upgrade an OS on a comp? Install an application? Check what software is installed on the chief accountant’s laptop? Update antivirus and scan a computer for vulnerabilities? Prolong a license? Correct some pesky setting that’s preventing a program from working as it should? All that and a lot more the sysadmin can do today without leaving his/her room with the help of the same systems management. And just think of the improved productivity of labor and lowering of costs! And how much simpler the life of the sysadmin becomes!

In the early 2000s a control system for the security of a network appeared in our products. It formed a teeny-weeny (but oh-so important) part of systems management, responsible for the monitoring of protected workstations, installation and updating of antivirus, and so on.

More: 10 years later…