Trumpets, drum roll, applause, cheering, whistling! Herewith, two bits of news for you: one good, the other – even better!…

First: this year we’ll be having our 15^th annual cybersecurity conference – the Security Analyst Summit (SAS). Fifteen? Oh my gone-where-has-the-time?!

Second: We’re finally back to an offline, aka – in-person, aka – face-to-face format, just like old times!

// In recent years this conference and indeed many others have been online.

Our tradition of annually bringing together top cybersecurity experts, academics and business folks from all around the world in a warm and pleasant location began way back in 2009. (Blimey – 2009 seems like yesterday; it’s a full 14 years ago!) Back then it was a lot smaller in size, but over the years it’s grown gradually to become one of the key yearly fixtures on the global cybersecurity-event calendar.

// For those who might want to review how SAS has developed over the years, check this tag out.

This year the warm and pleasant location will be Phuket in Thailand, where the conference will run from October 25 to 27. As usual we’ll be presenting, sharing and discussing the latest trends in cybersecurity (including recently uncovered APT attacks) plus cutting-edge achievements in the field of research and technology.

Spoiler: emphasis will be placed on the following topics:

• Protection of industrial infrastructure;
• ICS/OT security;
• Supply-chain and IoT attacks;
• Methods for tackling ransomware and the darknet;
• The unveiling of our new training course in reverse engineering and Ghidra – presented by our GReAT.

And we’ve already announced the call for papers! If you want to present your ground-breaking research or innovational solution, enter the respective info on the site…

So there you have it folks – SAS 2023: approaching fast. It’s going to be GReAT, it’s going to be interesting, it’s going to be super-informative, it’s going to be a super-success – as always!…

See you in Phuket!…

In closing – a quick SAS photo-retrospective…

We had our Global Partner Conference 2023 the other week. And, getting ahead of myself, let me tell you it was a great success!…

Our global partner conferences are one of the most important regular business events for us. They’re where we tell our partner companies (distributors, system integrators, service providers, and so on) from all over the world how our products and services are developing, and how those products and services can help their customers solve the most difficult aspects of cybersecurity all the more. In turn, our partners share with us how their business is growing and changing, what’s happening in their regional markets, what they want more of, and what their customers dream of. Then it’s back to us to tell them what we envision they’ll be wanting in a year’s time, in two years’ time, and in five. And it all looks something like this:

Read on…

Hi folks!

We’ve never been busier, and that goes for the whole of the fateful 2022 and also the first half of this year. Busy as bees we are. And it’s the same for me personally as well as the Kompany: business trips almost back-to-back, with “breathers” in-between back home turning into busy workdays too. But it is what it is, and who am I to complain?…

As per the eternal tradition at K though – in addition to working hard we also play hard. Last Friday we had the annual Kiddies Day at HQ, and soon – in July – we’ll be having our annual K-Birthday all-dayer, back after last year’s omission. While the other day there was some more “play” for me, though I’d hardly call it hard. Still just as fun…

I was in Nizhny Novgorod – on business, of course, but I managed to fit in the mandatory walkabout downtown – specifically, along the city’s famed pedestrianized Bolshaya Pokrovskaya Street – the perfect spot stretch for strolling, eating, drinking, chilling, and assorted other (legal) pastiming…

It seems angels are a thing of late, not only in Belarus but here too!

Read on…

Greetings boys and girls!

Suddenly – we’ve another jubillee. Hurray!…

Our cyber-immune operating system – KasperskyOS – is today… wait. No, that’s not quite correct…

Exactly 20 years ago – on November 11, 2002 – we began a long, hugely significant journey; a journey we’re in fact still on. A large, grandiose project that will change (and is already changing!) so much in the global cybersecurity domain. And that’s not hyperbole folks – it’s for real. And to get the full (hi)story of our cyber-immune OS, we need to go back to its humble beginnings in the early 2000s…

But before I go back 20 years, let me say a few words about today – November 11, 2022. Everyone today (besides the cave-dweller) understands perfectly well the critical importance of cybersecurity. Trillions of dollars are spent today on treating the symptoms of cyber-disease, but hardly any on dealing with its root causes. And the only way to break the cycle of constant Band-Aiding those symptoms is an overhaul of the architecture of computer systems, no less. Agree? Yes? Good, and thank you!…

The first time I’d gotten an inkling about this was even earlier than 20 years ago – in the fall of… 1989! For it was then when my PC became infected with the Cascade virus, which got me all curious and prompted me to start developing protection against it and all other cyber-contagion.

Thus, curiosity killed the cat was the start of everything for us. It was why our –V anti-virus first appeared, later why Kaspersky Lab was founded, and later still why we expanded right around the globe.

Fast-forward a full 12 years after Cascade, and my understanding of the imperfection of existing operating systems and the urgent need to do something about it finally, let’s say, crystalized, and came to the surface on a practical level (apologies for this perhaps seemingly over-detailed history tree, but it is, after all, our heritage:)…

Read on…

The other week I found myself at Innoprom-2022 – the industrial exhibition in Yekaterinburg. I’d been twice before – in 2017 and 2021 – and, come this year, I can now say that it’s progressed well.

I was there for just one day, and was as busy as a bee – as per the template. Still – I did manage to find the time to take a few pics of some of the more intriguing stands and exhibits…

But, first – it wasn’t the exhibits or stands that impressed most of all. Can you guess what did? Have a look at the following photo. Got it?…

Masks no longer needed. Hurray! Away with you, maddening muzzles! Yes, the virus has weakened, immunity has risen, and the situation is (seemingly, mostly) under control. Let’s hope it stays that way. And I’m sure it will. After all, mega-awful mutants tend to visit us every ~50 years: there was the Spanish flu in 1918–1920, then the Hong Kong flu in 1968–1970, and then of course corona in 2020–2021 (yes, there’ve been other virus pandemics, but they came and went much less noticeably). Anyway, no matter: the latest semi-centennial pandemic – done and dusted!

Right. Next thing to impress? Actually – it wasn’t impress, it was more depress. Just look at these lines to get into the event! Folks had to wait sometimes over an hour. Nope. Sorry: organizers – get a grip. This won’t do at all. Sort it. // I was lucky: as a speaker I entered through a designated door without having to wait.

Once inside – first thing’s first: head over to our stand, where I had my first meeting scheduled. And here we are! ->

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My first international business trip of the year was as modest as it could get – with just a single port of call. But that port of call was sunny Riyadh, which sure made a welcome change to the sub-zero temperatures and daily snow that’s been falling in Moscow since November!…

I’d been to the city before – in 2013 and 2014 – and both times for conferences, speeches and meetings, and with hardly any micro-tourisms. This year – zero micro-tourisms; not even a nano-tourism. As per – the business schedule was a full and busy one, including matters connected with the imminent opening of our local office here (which I’ll get to in another post). Alas, it was so busy… – zero nice photos too. Apologies folks. My excuse? You’ve got to work hard!

What I remember most from my two first trips to Saudi was that practically all the folks I’d meet would say the same thing: without a serious transformation in the country there’s no future for it in the modern world. To be honest, back then I was a little amazed by the boldness of such statements, but now I see that wasn’t just talk. Changes have been made, and though they’re not big changes, they are noticeable. First of all, public transportation is being built! Earlier there was no such thing: Riyadh was strictly car-only. Today there are overhead transportation lines. No trains yet, but things are looking good ->

Read on…

Unlike most folks, I was lucky enough to be traveling again recently (jabbed, boosted, masked and social distancing, of course:) – this time to Dubai, one of my fave places on the planet, to which I normally get to at least once a year (during non-covid times). This year’s visit, however, was a little different…

First impressions upon arriving: another empty airport, just like others I’ve been in recently.

Second impressions: yikes – more deserted emptiness. A city seemingly half-alive – a bit like Barcelona in June of this year.

Third impression: actually, it’s not all bad; for example, going from the airport’s Terminal 1 to the business reception/meeting zone, I had a full long carriage on the monorail to myself! ->

And there were only one or two folks in the next carriage too…

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Personal experience, plus what I’m told by other clever folks, has taught me to treat with much skepticism any predictions regarding the future given by so-called experts – in fact all kinds of prognoses and prophesies about this, that and the other. Although I tend to share this view, I have to make an exception for the predictions of one single person in particular: me! Why? Because, unfortunately, those predictions normally come true…

Ten years ago, when we chose industrial cybersecurity as one of our new main areas for development of the company, attacks on industrial equipment were largely deemed hype and/or something out of Hollywood, or at least limited to relatively few specific enterprises; for example, ones like this. But since the beginning of the 2010s I’ve been repeating (ad nauseam!) that, sooner or later, attacks on industrial installations will go mainstream and become massive in scale, and that modern industrial security is sadly very lacking in its ability to cope with the realities of the digital world.

Today, attacks on industrial objects are becoming a daily – very expensive – reality. We’ve already seen how a ransomware-cyberattack on a mere office network of large pipeline can bring about a short-term rise in the price of gasoline in the U.S.A. So imagine how much more costly attacks on industrial components of critical infrastructure operators could be. And it’s not just a matter of financial losses incurred by targeted companies caused by their compelled down time – there’s also the hit taken by all the consumers of the companies’ products and services, which can be painful for regional economies and even national ones.

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We have a long tradition of celebrating the Kompany’s birthday in the middle of July every year. I say every year – indeed it was every year since 1997 – but, alas, last year we had to break from tradition, for obvious reasons. But that only made us all the more keen to bounce back to normal this year, continuing where we left off in 2019 – with a big bang!

It was touch and go, of course, whether it would go ahead at all this year given the ongoing… situation, but in the end – yeh! So on July 16, again on a bank of the river Volga at a hotel complex in the countryside outside Moscow, it was time to party: party hard, party fun (as we always do), and this year – party safe!

‘But, like… what? There’s a global pandemic still raging!’, I can hear some of your say…

Hold your horses. Back up a bit, and here’s a bit more on ‘partying safe’…

Read on…

After a year+ hiatus, business life is finally slowly returning to normal. Hurray! Recent indicators of this: the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, the IT Forum in Khanty-Mansiysk, Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and just the other day I returned from the Innoprom International Industrial Fair in Yekaterinburg.

So what can I say? First: it’s much more modest in scale than the gigantic proportions of something like Germany’s Hannover Messe – both in terms of the overall quantity of products on show, and also the variety. All the same, there was plenty to look at ->

Read on…