Kaspersky Kaspersky Lab

Kaspersky Lab is an international group of companies with a central office in Moscow and five regional divisions through which the activities of local representative offices and partners of the company are managed in the relevant regions: in Western Europe, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa, in the Americas, Japan and other countries of the Asia-Pacific region. The company's partner network brings together more than 700 first-level partners in more than 100 countries around the world.

Performance indicators

Main article: Financial indicators of Kaspersky Lab

2022: Revenue growth 0.03% to $752 million

At the end of 2022, Kaspersky Lab received revenue of $752 million, which approximately corresponds to the indicator for 2021. Year-on-year growth was 0.03%, as stated in the financial report published on June 4, 2023. In the ranking "TAdviser100: The largest IT companies in Russia 2023," the revenue indicator of 51,549 million (rubles revenue translated into at the rubles weighted average rate) dollar allowed the company to take 12th place.

In the Russian market, Kaspersky Lab sales increased by 51% compared to 2021 (specific figures were not disclosed). In particular, revenue from the implementation of endpoint security solutions rose 44% over the year. In the segment of products to counter complex threats, sales jumped 66%, while expert services showed an increase of 120%.

If we consider new product areas, then they recorded a multiple increase in revenue. Sales of MDR (Managed Detection and Response - a system for detecting threats, information security responding to them and investigating cyber incidents) have grown 10 times, SIEM (tools for monitoring and analyzing events in the field of information security) - almost 4 times, Kaspersky Symphony solutions - twice.

Despite the difficult geopolitical situation, the company's activities remained stable, which favorably affected the results: during 2022, business growth continued in key segments, including in the field of solutions for large businesses, the Kaspersky Lab report said.

It is noted that in 2022, in the global market, the company's activities were influenced by an increase in tension in international relations. At the same time, corporate sales around the world increased by 8%. This is primarily due to the growth in the segment of endpoint protection (plus 1% compared to 2021) and new promising solutions and technologies that protect companies from the most complex cyber threats - the so-called non-endpoint (plus 31%). Compared to 2021, Kaspersky Anti Targeted Attack Platform and Kaspersky Fraud Prevention showed active growth, increasing by 105% and 84%, respectively, and the total sales growth of solutions in the large business segment was 23%.^[1]

How and why Kaspersky became Kaspersky

• How and why Kaspersky became Kaspersky. TAdviser investigation

Business in Asia, Europe and the United States

• Kaspersky's business in Asia
• Kaspersky's business in Europe
• Kaspersky business in the United States

Acquisitions and divestment

Main article: Acquisitions and sale of Kaspersky Lab assets

History

2024

Court decision: return tax breaks for millions of rubles

On November 6, 2024, it became known that the Moscow Arbitration Court rejected Kaspersky Lab's claim to invalidate the decision of the tax inspectorate, which brought the antivirus developer to justice for receiving a tax benefit that did not owe him. The case file refers to millions of rubles.

According to CNews, the process was initiated at the end of July 2024. The reason was the decision of the Inspectorate of the Federal Tax Service (IFNS) No. 43 in the city of Moscow, which convicted Kaspersky Lab of a violation - receiving an illegal property tax benefit. The benefit concerned office premises in the buildings of the Olympia Park business center, which are part of the property complex of the Vodny Stadium technopark. These premises were allegedly improved at the expense of Kaspersky Lab, which financed the installation of lighting, ventilation, automation, etc.

Moscow court forced Kaspersky Lab to return tax breaks worth millions of rubles

In March 2023, Kaspersky Lab submitted an initial tax return on property tax for organizations for 2022, which reflected the benefit established by paragraph 27 of Part 1 of Article 4 of the Law of the City of Moscow dated November 5, 2003 No. 64 "On Property Tax Organizations." The benefit provides for exemption from the payment of property tax on organizations in relation to "registered by the company on its balance sheet as fixed assets of inseparable improvements in rented office premises."

However, IFNS No. 43 made a decision on the illegality of the benefit and charged Kaspersky Lab with an arrears in property tax on organizations in the amount of 4 million rubles. It was this decision that the company tried to challenge, but the court completely rejected the claim. It was established that Kaspersky Lab is not entitled to declare a tax credit and the company's claims are not subject to satisfaction^[2]

Increase in share in "New cloud technologies" to 68.8%

On October 28, 2024, it became known that Kaspersky Lab entered into an agreement to acquire an additional 5 percent stake in New Cloud Technologies LLC, which produces software products under the MyOffice brand. The asset was sold by Media Project Development Group LLC; the amount of the transaction at the time of its execution was not disclosed. Read more here.

Vice President for Digitalization of Atomstroyexport moved to work at Kaspersky Lab

As TAdviser found out in October 2024, Olga Tolstunova, vice president of digitalization and information technology at Atomstroyexport, went to work at Kaspersky Lab. The company clarified that she was appointed vice president of the corporate business products department at Kaspersky Lab. Read more here.

Opening an office in Colombia

Kaspersky Lab in August 2024 announced the opening of a new office in Colombia. This is the third representative office of the company in the region after Mexico City and São Paulo. The new office, located in Bogota, will become the company's focal point for coordinating operations in North Latin America, including Central America, the Caribbean and Colombia.

According to the press service of Kaspersky Lab, the founder and CEO of the company, Yevgeny Kaspersky, personally attended the grand opening of the office. In his speech, he emphasized the strategic importance of the region for the company and expressed confidence that the new office will strengthen the cyber resilience of organizations in Latin America.

Kaspersky Lab opened an office in Colombia

Our presence in Colombia will help strengthen the cyber resilience of organizations in Latin America. We are ready to share our expertise, knowledge and experience in order to together take another step towards a safer digital future for everyone, "Kaspersky said.

Claudio Martinelli, Managing Director of Kaspersky Lab in the Americas, noted that the opening of a new office is a logical stage in the development of the company in the region where it has been successfully operating for 16 years. He stressed that Latin American clients especially value the company's flexibility in data management, which allows you to maintain control over information in accordance with local laws.

Daniela Alvarez de Lugo, CEO of Kaspersky Lab in the NOLA region, added that the opening of an office in Bogota demonstrates the company's commitment to its partners and customers in the region, and also emphasizes Colombia's strategic and economic importance in Latin America.

As of August 2024, 150 Kaspersky Lab employees work in Latin America, including experts from Kaspersky GReAT (Global Center for Threat Research and Analysis), who study and counter current cyber threats in the region.^[3]

Kaspersky Lab: Apple did not pay us for the vulnerabilities found

In early June 2024, it became known that the company Apple refused to pay Kaspersky Lab a reward for discovered vulnerabilities in, operating system iOS which is used on smartphones. iPhone This, in particular, is a hole that allows Zero-Click attacks that do not require any participation from the user.

Dmitry Galov, head of the RTVI Kaspersky Lab research center, told the resource that Russian specialists transmitted information about Zero-Day vulnerabilities to Apple. They allow you to download spyware to your iPhone. ON Moreover, the introduction of such a program occurs absolutely secretly from the user and without any of his participation, that is, according to the Zero-Click scheme. After that, the malware, unnoticed by the owner of the device, transmits servers confidential information to remote ones: recordings from a microphone, photos from instant messengers, location and information about a number of other activities.

Apple refused to pay Kaspersky Lab a reward for discovered vulnerabilities in the iOS operating system

According to Apple Security Bounty, Zero-Click hole detection rewards range from $5,000 to $1 million. However, Apple, without explanation, refused to transfer money to Kaspersky Lab.

We do not need this reward, but there is a practice of such payments from large companies to transfer to charity. Apple refused to pay us, even in favor of the charity, citing domestic politics, without explanation, "Galov notes.

According to Kaspersky Lab, an attack through a hole is carried out using an invisible iMessage message with a malicious attachment. At the same time, it is alleged that an extremely complex spyware is used, which, after penetrating a smartphone, blocks the ability to update iOS.^[4]

Co-founding role in ANO "Smart Apartment home"

At the end of March 2024, Yandex (through its subsidiary Alice Lab), Kaspersky Lab and the Etalon construction group became the new founders of the Smart Apartment home autonomous non-profit organization (ANO) to promote the development of digitalization of apartment buildings. This is evidenced by the data of the service "Kontur. Focus." Read more here.

2023

10th place in the ranking of TAdviser "The largest IT companies in Russia"

Kaspersky Lab took 10th place in the ranking of the 100 largest companies operating in the Russian IT market, prepared by TAdviser in June 2024 based on the companies' revenue for 2023. Read more here.

Kaspersky Lab will open its first transparency center in Africa

In November, Kaspersky Lab plans to open its first transparency center (Transperancy Center) in Africa, it will be located in Rwanda. Amin Hasbini, head of the company's research center in the Middle East, Turkey and Africa, told TAdviser about this on October 16, 2023 at the GITEX exhibition in Dubai.

The transparency center in Rwanda should be the eleventh in a row with the company. According to the Kaspersky Lab website, it already has those in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), Madrid (Spain), Rome (Italy), São Paulo (Brazil), Singapore, Tokyo (Japan), Utrecht (Netherlands), Woburn (USA), Zurich (Switzerland) and Riyadh (Saudi Arabia).

In Kaspersky Lab transparency centers, visitors are given the opportunity to see what practices are used in the company to ensure transparency, and to familiarize themselves with the source code of products. This is done as part of a global initiative on information openness, which the company has been implementing since 2018. Its goal is to strengthen confidence in Kaspersky Lab products and processes, as well as guarantee their transparency. Kaspersky Lab is the first cybersecurity company to publicly disclose its source code for external evaluation and make available to partners and customers a list of third-party components in its software.

Customers, especially from the public sector, want to make sure that the company is doing exactly what it is talking about. They are invited to the transparency center to see the code themselves, analyze, make sure that the company is not doing anything that has not been announced.

We decided that our first centre of transparency should be close to central Africa. We have very large projects there, "Rwanda's choice to open the Amin Hasbini Centre explained to TAdviser.

In the short term, the centre in Rwanda will be designed for customers across Africa. Kaspersky Lab already has an office in this country. And in the future, Kaspersky Lab is considering opening a transparency center in South Africa, where it also already has an office, and maybe in northern Africa too, says Amin Hasbini. In northern Africa, in particular, there is also a great demand for cyber solutions and services.

The company believes that in Africa as a whole there is great potential - there is a growing demand for solutions and information security services. One of the drivers of this growth is business development in Africa, Amin Hasbini believes. Over the past years, infrastructure and technologies have been actively developing there, large digital businesses appear, including in the field of online trading.

As the level of Internet penetration in African countries increases, the Internet economy is gaining more weight. So, according to the forecast of Google and International Finance Corporation (IFC)^[5], by 2025, Africa's Internet economy could reach 5.2% of GDP or $180 billion. And digital businesses need protection.

There is also demand from the state, especially due to geopolitical instability and the fact that against the background of various conflicts there are cyber attacks on critical infrastructure - the latter can already be called a trend.

Earlier, in September 2023, Kaspersky Lab opened a transparency center in Saudi Arabia - the first in the Middle East. In this region, the company also notes an increase in demand for information security products.

Amin Hasbini notes that in his region there are researchers from among the best in Kaspersky Lab. Their presence is very important, because it allows you to interact with the local community, local state organizations and have an up-to-date vision of the situation. By doing this, you can quickly detect threats and attacks in order to ultimately better protect users.

Launch of the discipline of cyber immunity at the University "Synergy"

Synergy University has concluded a strategic cooperation agreement with the international company Kaspersky Lab. The subject of this agreement was the introduction of the educational discipline cyber immunity, built on the basis of the methodology of the project of the same name "Kaspersky Lab." This approach is intended to radically change the future of information product development. The university announced this on August 24, 2023. Read more here.

TAdviser interview with Andrey Suvorov, Head of Business Development at KasperskyOS

Despite the growing demand for remote jobs during the pandemic, the global market for thin clients with which this opportunity is realized is small. According to experts, 6-8 million devices are sold annually in the world, and this sales volume remains unchanged from year to year. However, this year there was an event that is expected to create a new one next to a not very large and dynamic market.

Andrey Suvorov, head of business development at Kaspersky Lab's KasperskyOS, and Mikhail Ushakov, CEO of the TONK group of companies, in an interview revealed the details of the creation and development of the promotion in Russia of a solution for building a cyber-immune and functional infrastructure of thin clients - Kaspersky Secure Remote Workspace. Read more here.

Agreement with the Sports Programming Federation

2022

1st place in the ranking "The largest providers of solutions in the field of information security in Russia"

Kaspersky Lab took 1st place in the TAdviser rating, prepared on the basis of revenue from the implementation of information security projects in Russia in 2022 and published in October 2023. The rating includes vendors, integrators and distributors of information security products. More 2022:_TAdviser_Security_100:_.D0.9A.D1.80.D1.83.D0.BF.D0.BD.D0.B5.D0.B9.D1.88.D0.B8.D0.B5_.D0.98.D0.91-.D0.BA.D0.BE.D0.BC.D0.BF.D0.B0.D0.BD.D0.B8.D0.B8_.D0.B2_.D0.A0.D0.BE.D1.81.D1.81.D0.B8.D0.B8 here.

Are you sure you weren't hacked? The answer will be given by the service for searching for traces of compromise

In recent years, the relevance of this quote continues to grow. Attackers are increasingly planning their attacks, inventing new sophisticated tactics, techniques, utilities for penetrating corporate networks of organizations and further consolidating them in their infrastructures. At the same time, the attackers are trying their best to avoid detection by means of protection.

[1] Kaspersky Lab incident response statistics demonstrate that in some cases attacks lasted more than a year until they were discovered. Obviously, the sooner malicious activity is detected, the less damage the organization will suffer. Read more here.

Participation in the TAdviser conference "Import substitution 2022: a new experience"

Kaspersky Lab will tell business how to cope with new cybersecurity challenges at the conference "Import Substitution 2022: A New Experience."

In 2022 cyber security , two new ­ were added to the already growing challenges for business ― an increase in the number attacks of the Russian companies and the need for. According to import substitution Kaspersky Lab, from January to May, the number of cyber incidents in Russian companies increased by more than a third (38%) compared to the same period last year. The number of cyber attacks on government agencies increased almost 10 times, the number of incidents in doubled, MEDIA threats financial to sector companies were recorded 70% more often. Among the most frequently attacked are transport the industry and. IT

The situation is complicated by the fact that many companies are in search of analogues of solutions to those manufacturers who have left the Russian market, and are still left without protection. Even if a foreign IT product is not blocked and continues to work, but without updates, then its use becomes a great risk for companies.

At the conference "Import Substitution 2022: New Experience," industry experts will discuss how to achieve maximum import independence in a short time and while minimizing costs. In particular, Alexey Kiselev, head of the sales department for small and medium-sized businesses at Kaspersky Lab, will share his experience. In his report "Cyber ​ ​ protection of business in Russia. How to ensure business stability in the new conditions, "the speaker will tell you what companies need in the new conditions to protect themselves from complex threats and repel attacks before they cause significant damage.

Kaspersky Lab asked employees who wished to leave Russia to quit

Kaspersky Lab asked employees who wished to leave Russia to quit. On August 23, 2022, Motherboard wrote about this with reference to people working in a Russian antivirus company.

Two Kaspersky Lab employees said that they asked the employer to transfer them to offices outside Russia. According to one of the portal's interlocutors, the management refused to meet the employees halfway and instead recommended that they write a letter of resignation, since the founder and CEO Yevgeny Kaspersky wants employees to support the company in difficult times.

If the captain remains on the ship, the team should also remain on the ship, regardless of the weather, "one of the former employees of the company quoted Yevgeny Kaspersky.

Another former employee confirmed that this is the answer he received from Kaspersky during a meeting with him.

According to Motherboard, at least five employees after this statement decided to leave the company, as they were not satisfied with such working conditions. One of the employees who went abroad to work before this meeting happened was asked in the human resources department to choose between returning or quitting.

Kaspersky Lab commented on the Motherboard article as follows:

In terms of relocation, the company is primarily guided by business necessity. The program is available to all employees. We process such requests on an individual basis: we look at the presence of a vacancy in the selected region, the employee's internal expertise and knowledge of the local market, take into account the principles of a specific team. If the employee meets the requirements declared in the vacancy, his candidacy is considered as a priority; in case of successful completion of interviews, he will be able to respond. There have already been such cases.

According to the Kaspersky Lab website, by August 2022, the company has 35 offices in 31 countries.^[6]

One of the co-founders of Kaspersky Lab, Alexey De-Monderik, left the company

On August 15, 2022, it became known about the departure of Alexei De-Monderik from Kaspersky Lab, as well as the company's board of directors. According to TASS, citing the press service of the antivirus manufacturer, by agreement of the parties, the company bought out the shares of the co-founder of Kaspersky Lab. The company added that De-Monderic does not participate in the activities of Kaspersky Lab. Read more here.

Anna Kulashova - the new manager of Kaspersky Lab in Russia and the CIS

Anna Kulashova became the managing director of Kaspersky Lab in Russia and the CIS countries, which the antivirus company announced on July 5, 2022. Read more here.

How to replace foreign information security solutions? Overview of Kaspersky Lab products

Kaspersky Lab developers spoke about the possibilities of replacing the protective IT products of Western TAdviser vendors in a separate article.

Participation in TAdviser conference "Import substitution of IT in new conditions"

Against the background sanctions , many companies are faced with the need to replace the products of vendors who have left the market in the region. cyber security It is important for organizations to switch to new solutions as quickly as possible, since some products have stopped working or their effectiveness is decreasing every day due to the lack of service support and updates. As a result, the risk of missing a complex one increases. cyber attack The total number of incidents is also increasing: in the first quarter of 2022, it increased 4 times compared to the same period of the previous year.

At import substitution the TAdviser conference "Import Substitution of IT in New Conditions," Alexey Kiselev the head of the Customer Relations Department of the Middle small business and Kaspersky Lab will talk about how companies can build effective cyber protection in conditions. The speaker will make a report "Cyber ​ ​ protection of business in: how Russia to ensure the stability of business in the new conditions."

According to Kaspersky Lab, both classic antivirus solutions for corporate or industrial use and other information security tools are in increasing demand on the Russian market: protection of mail servers and Internet gateways, protection against DDoS and targeted attacks, analytical products, information security and SecureCAD employee training services. To quickly help organizations in the import substitution process, the company has significantly simplified theMigrate program for a quick and profitable transition to Kaspersky Lab solutions.

"Due to the withdrawal from the Russian market of foreign suppliers of information security solutions, many companies have difficulties. Some products stopped working, on other systems - updates to the threat base stopped. Now such solutions may not recognize attacks, skip spam, do not block transitions to dangerous sites, and so on. Fortunately, the field of information security in Russia has always been famous for its specialists, the variety of domestic vendors and their IT products. Therefore, companies can find Russian counterparts for replacement. When choosing, contact proven suppliers, study reviews and test results, this will help you find the optimal solution, "comments Alexey Kiselev, Head of Customer Service at Kaspersky Lab.

Kaspersky Lab opened an office in Saudi Arabia

Kaspersky Lab opened an office in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, the Middle East publication Gulf Business^[7] reported on April 20, 2022^[8]

The official representative of Kaspersky Lab in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, Mohamad Hashem, noted that Saudi Arabia continues to be one of the key markets for the company in the region. As the country moves forward on innovation and the "figure first" agenda, it needs to have a strong position in cybersecurity.

Kaspersky Lab's new office in Saudi Arabia will mainly deal with sales and technical support for the company's solutions. To provide the proper level of expertise, we also have specialists working there, whose task is to analyze the current landscape of cyber threats in the region, - explained TAdviser in the Russian office of Kaspersky Lab.

The company is already actively working in the country. The team today has more than 20 specialists, Kaspersky Lab added.

Saudi Arabia ranks first in cybersecurity preparedness in the Middle East and Africa region, according to a Global Cybersecurity Index study. In addition to efforts to build a reliable information security infrastructure, the country also presented a national cybersecurity strategy that assumes high readiness in the future when implementing the "figure first" approach.

According to the Kaspersky Lab website, in addition to a new office in Saudi Arabia in the Middle East, it also has an office in Dubai, UAE. It was opened back in 2008.

As of April, the company has not yet released its 2021 financial results. In 2020, Kaspersky Lab's revenue in the Middle East, Turkey and Africa (META region) increased by 14%. The share of this region in the total turnover of the developer was 8%.

In the history of Kaspersky Lab's work in the Middle East, an episode of cooperation with local law enforcement agencies is known: in 2019, they were handed over the results of an investigation into a cyber espionage campaign called SneakyPastes, organized by the politically motivated Arabic-speaking group Gaza^[9].

Australia's largest IT distributor breaks contract with Kaspersky Lab

The Australian company Dicker Data in March 2022 terminated the distribution contract with Kaspersky Lab^[10]. Dicker Data calls itself the largest local distributor of hardware, software and cloud solutions. The company has been a partner of Kaspersky in the markets of Australia and New Zealand since 2019.

The decision to terminate cooperation was made against the background of the actions of the Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine. A significant role in its adoption was played by the fact that Dicker Data Operations Director Vladimir Mitnovetsky has Ukrainian roots.

This is tough on the Russian guys with whom we collaborated, but Vlad is Ukrainian, and this affects us much more. But even if not for this, sometimes you just need to do some things, "said Dicker Data CEO David Dicker.

In response to this step, Kaspersky thanked Dicker Data for their hard work and dedication. The company assured that it will fulfill all its obligations to partners.

Dicker Data's decision coincided with the Agency's warning cyber security Germany that Russian technology companies could voluntarily or unwittingly be involved in, and cyber attacks a call for organizations to diversify the information security solutions used. Kaspersky Lab believes that this was done for political reasons.

At the same time, the Italian government has begun to develop a law to replace all disturbing software in state administrations, fearing that Russian government organizations could hack antivirus software like Kaspersky and disrupt key websites.

These steps were taken despite the fact that Kaspersky for years assured that their company was not connected with the Kremlin and even offered the American government access to the source code of products in order to dispel suspicions. American government agencies have been banned from using Kaspersky products since 2017.

David Dicker says that in their case, the termination of cooperation with Kaspersky is not related to international concern about security, but rather based on a moral assessment.

Officially, the partnership between Kaspersky and Dicker Data should end on April 30, 2022^[11]Kaspersky transfers all distribution of its products in Australia and New Zealand to the local Leader company, with which it entered into an agreement in February, even before the start of Russia's special operation in Ukraine.

As of March 2022, Kaspersky has not yet published a report on financial results for 2021. In 2020, the company accounted for about 10% of revenue in the Asia-Pacific region.

Preventing Central Bank Cyber ​ ​ Robbery in Latin America

In mid-February 2022, it became known that during a joint investigation, Kaspersky Lab and Interpol prevented the theft of funds from the central bank of one of the Latin American countries. What state in question is not specified.

As told in the Russian company, the hack was revealed at the stage when the attacker tried to find partners for further attack. Such a scheme has become especially common in the past couple of years. In this scenario, different people are responsible for different stages of the attack: some hack organizations, others carry out an attack, for example, encrypt and steal data, others demand a ransom and take over the financial part.

Kaspersky Lab discovered the stolen data when it was offered as evidence of entry into the organization. Experts analyzed this information and found that the attacker was able to gain access to the entire infrastructure of the central bank of one of the Latin American countries, including the system of international financial transfers. To prevent any further actions of the attackers, the company promptly reported the incident to Interpol and the International Payment System. After a joint investigation, all vulnerabilities in the bank's corporate network were closed and opportunities for attack were blocked.

Kaspersky Lab reported that the company discovered that attackers found a loophole that allowed them to access the infrastructure of the central bank.

International cooperation, as well as the ability to act promptly, plays an extremely important role in countering such attacks. Therefore, as soon as we collected information about exactly how the attackers could act, we immediately notified Interpol. Coordinated and clear interaction made it possible to stop the actions of attackers before real damage was caused to this organization, the company said.[12]

2021

Creation of the Competence Center for Cybersecurity of KII Facilities

Rosatom State Corporation, Kaspersky Lab International and the Trusted Platform Association have signed a memorandum of cooperation to implement the principles of end-to-end safety * in industry. This was announced on August 6, 2021 by Greenatom. The parties have created the Center of Competence for Cybersecurity of Critical Information Infrastructure (CII) Facilities. Read more here.

Loss in a dispute with the Federal Tax Service for 42 million rubles

In mid-May 2021, Kaspersky Lab lost a tax dispute by almost 42 million. rubles The Arbitration Court Moscow of the city refused to invalidate the decision FTS to add additional income tax due to an incorrectly applied coefficient.

According to the publication "Право.ру," at the end of 2019, the Interdistrict Inspectorate of the Federal Tax Service for the largest taxpayers No. 7 conducted an on-site check of the updated tax return on the income tax of Kaspersky Lab for 2014. Based on the results of the audit, it was concluded that the company unlawfully applied the 1.5 coefficient to expenses that were not related to scientific research and development (R&D). As a result, the tax offered the company to pay 41.6 million rubles.

Kaspersky Lab refused to make such a payment and first appealed to a higher tax authority and then to the court. The Arbitration Court of the city of Moscow eventually sided with the Federal Tax Service.

At the request of the tax forensic examination of the work of Kaspersky Lab was carried out at the Moscow State Technical University named after N.E. Bauman and came to the conclusion that the work is not scientific research and does not create scientific novelty. The involved expert came to similar conclusions - Candidate of Technical Sciences, Senior Researcher, Institute for Information Transmission named after RAS Kurochkin I. I.

The fact that Kaspersky Lab received a patent for the result does not indicate its innovation or scientific significance, the court noted.

Kaspersky Lab ordered an examination from ITMO, they came to the conclusion that the work "nevertheless refers to the creation of new or improvement of the technologies and software products used and are scientific research and/or development." The court, however, drew attention to the fact that Kaspersky Lab has been cooperating with ITMO for 10 years, organizing events, and issuing grants.

According to court materials, the developments that became problematic concerned the product Kaspersky Internet Security - software for comprehensive protection of personal computers.^[13]

How to protect a company from a targeted attack. Angara and Kaspersky Lab Toolkit Overview

A couple of years ago, it was believed that against point and rare cyber attacks types of advanced persistent threat () APT attacks there is no sufficient variety of means of protection, and we are talking exclusively about the competition of human intelligence. Today, on the one hand, attackers actually put APT on stream attacks , using ready-made harmful ON and skills to operate legitimate tools. On the other hand, countermeasures have appeared that provide protection against APT, and including this kind of protection is available as one of the corporate services. information security Such a service is jointly provided by companies (Angara Professional Assistance part of the group of companies) Angara and Kaspersky Lab. More. here

FAS found Kaspersky Lab guilty of deceiving customers while promoting Kaspersky Password Manager

The Federal Antimonopoly Service (xxFederal Antimonopoly Service of the Russian Federation (FAS)|FAS]]) at the end of January 2021 found Kaspersky Lab guilty of deceiving customers in advertising. We are talking about promoting the Kaspersky Password Manager application. Read more here.

2020

Inclusion in the TAdviser rating "The largest suppliers of information security solutions in Russia"

Kaspersky is included in the rating "The largest suppliers of information security solutions in Russia" by revenue for 2020, "prepared by TAdviser in October 2021. Read more here.

Disclosure of the number of requests from the authorities - 160

On October 1, 2021, it became known about the first disclosure by Kaspersky Lab of data on the number of requests from the authorities to the company. In 2020, the antivirus software manufacturer received a total of 160 requests from law enforcement agencies and government agencies in 15 countries, including 93 from Russia.

23 and 11 appeals to Kaspersky Lab were made by the authorities of South Korea and France, respectively, RBC reports with reference to the company's materials.

About 15% of requests processed by Kaspersky Lab were aimed at obtaining user data. The leaders in them were the Russian authorities. All such requests were rejected because they did not meet the requirements of internal verification or the requested data was not found.

User data means information that users of products and services voluntarily provide to the company so that its solutions can fully work on various devices. For example, this is information about the license or version of the operating system.

According to Oleg Abdurashitov, head of relations with government agencies at Kaspersky Lab, a large number of requests from the Russian authorities are due to the fact that a significant part of the company's experts are in Russia. In addition, the number of requests "reflects the quality of expertise and the reputation of the company's experts" and the attention paid to the fight against cybercrime in Russia.

In the case of cross-border crimes, local law enforcement agencies independently determine whether it is necessary to involve outside experts, and this process is largely shaped by the requirements of local legislation. The company advocates closer international cooperation in the investigation of cybercrime, primarily between law enforcement agencies, "he said in a conversation with RBC.[14]

Kaspersky: We do not want to leave Russia because of the "paradise" taxes

On December 5, 2020, an interview with Yevgeny Kaspersky with the Financial Times was published. In a conversation with a journalist, the founder and CEO of Kaspersky Lab called the favorable tax regime in Russia the reason for his unwillingness to transfer the company to another country.

The newspaper suggested that the move of Kaspersky Lab could be "the best way to remove suspicions" of espionage, but Kaspersky himself rejected this idea

To be honest, I am quite comfortable that we remain a Moscow company... because the Russian government does not affect us in any way, "Kaspersky said, adding that the tax regime for IT companies in the Russian Federation" is like in paradise. "

According to the entrepreneur, the restrictions imposed by the United States and Britain on the use of the company's products are actually due to geopolitical disputes. Currently, according to Kaspersky, relations between the West with Russia and China have become complicated to such an extent that they could be "frozen."

After the bans, their sales in the U.S. corporate sector fell by a quarter, Kaspersky said. The company itself has repeatedly stated that its products were not used for intelligence purposes.

The head of Kaspersky Lab noted that Russian hackers benefited from the deterioration in relations between Moscow and the West, which damaged international cooperation in the fight against cybercrime. And the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic has only exacerbated the situation, triggering a boom in ransomware attacks on hospitals and medical facilities that Kaspersky called "a kind of terrorism."

To combat this problem, very close cooperation between countries is necessary. Unfortunately, now the ties between different regions, different countries, east and west, have been destroyed, the businessman said.[15]

Inclusion in the list of backbone companies of the Russian economy

On April 21, 2020, the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications presented an up-to-date list of backbone companies - enterprises whose activities are important for the life support and functioning of a separate region or country. The company "Software Product" announced this on April 24, 2020.

79 companies were included in the list of organizations significant for the Russian economy, among them IT companies Mail.ru, Yandex, Kaspersky Lab, Rostelecom and Software Product. Read more here.

New Managing Director in Russia, CIS and Baltic States - Mikhail Pribochiy

On April 3, Kaspersky Lab announced that Mikhail Pribochiy would soon be appointed managing director of the company in Russia, the CIS and the Baltic countries. Sergey Zemkov, who held this position, moves to the post of adviser to the general director of Kaspersky Lab in the field of promising projects in Russia. Read more here.

2019

Charge of forcing bank accounts to be hacked

On September 20, 2019, it became known that hacker Dmitry Popelysh, who, together with his twin brother Yevgeny, is accused of stealing more than 12 million rubles from bank clients, accused former Kaspersky Lab employee Ruslan Stoyanov of forcing bank accounts to be hacked. Read more here.

Proposal to change the Australian analogue of the "Spring Law"

On July 11, 2019, it became known about the proposals prepared by Kaspersky Lab to finalize the Australian analogue of the Yarovaya Law.

This law, adopted in 2018, requires Internet companies to provide intelligence services with Australia the ability to access user correspondence. For violation, a fine of up to 10 million Australian (dollars about $7 million) is provided, as well as criminal punishment.

Many world IT companies, including Kaspersky Lab, are opposed to regulation and for adjusting the law, Kommersant writes.

Since we previously sent our recommendations, we were approached with a proposal to prepare our assessment of the law. Like other market players, we sent a second package of recommendations for consideration, "Oleg Abdurashitov, head of the regional department of Kaspersky Lab, told the publication.

According to him, the law in Australia is more stringent than its counterpart in the United States and Great Britain. Australian companies are forced to move development or servers from the country so that foreign customers do not refuse services.

Abdurashitov also added that without cooperation, "the balance will shift greatly from users and companies towards law enforcement agencies," which contributes to "further fragmentation of the Internet through state borders."

Sergey Vikharev, director of technology practice in risk consulting at KPMG in Russia and the CIS, believes that Australian regulation complicates the activities of software developers and can open up access to intellectual property of companies to various persons, as well as generally weaken the level of trust in the information security market. There is a fear that other countries of the British Commonwealth will follow the example of Australia, so we will already talk about a significant market, he said.^[16]

Change of English name to Kaspersky

On June 4, 2019, Kaspersky Lab announced the change of its English-language brand and the transition to the Kaspersky brand. The basis of the former logo was developed in 1997, when the company was just taking its first steps. The old logo used images of the Greek alphabet and small details, which in 20 years managed to lose their relevance.

We come from the 90s, creating a company back in 1997, we sought to create the coolest antivirus on the market. There could be no question of any positioning, image and philosophy of the brand. They didn't know such words! 22 years have passed, almost everything has changed. We have more than 4,000 people, we protect hundreds of millions of people and businesses around the world, even the concept of "antivirus" has already become outdated, "said Evgeny Kaspersky.

According to him, the new logo is built from geometric, mathematically accurate letter shapes, and it is based on values ​ ​ important for the company, for example, the highest class of the engineering school. In addition, the word "lab" has been removed from the logo.

Outside the Russian Federation, our company is most often called simply the name of your humble servant, that is, just Kaspersky. And so it is really simpler, shorter and clearer, - said Evgeny Kaspersky. - But if you dig a little deeper, it is clear that we are not just changing the visual style. The whole company is changing. We understand that our approach to business, to our products, to ourselves and our vision of the future has changed in recent years. All these years we saved the world. Fought against cyberzol in any of its formats and incarnations. But at the same time we grew and changed. And we feel the strength not only to save, but also to build a more secure, safe world. I am firmly sure that the very concept of "cybersecurity" will soon become obsolete, and the concept of "cyber immunity" will come to replace it.

Opening an office in Rwanda

In mid-May 2019, Kaspersky Lab opened a representative office in Rwanda with the aim of developing its business on the African continent. As a result, the Russian company has a total of 37 offices in 32 countries.

The Kaspersky Lab office, opened in the capital of Rwanda, Kigali, should help the company work closely with local partners, including IT and information security companies.

The opening of the Kaspersky Lab division in Rwanda was one of the topics of the Transform Africa Summit conference in Kigali. As part of this event, the founder and CEO of the antivirus company Yevgeny Kaspersky met with President Paul Kagame.

They talked about Kaspersky Lab's further cooperation with the Rwandan government and ways to protect the state from cyber threats. In addition, plans were discussed to create a new company office in Rwanda and the vendor's intentions to expand activities in neighboring countries.

Governments and companies need a comprehensive approach to detecting and responding to complex threats as they combat cybercriminals who have significant financial resources and are constantly striving to exploit any vulnerability, Yevgeny Kaspersky said at a meeting with Rwanda's leader.

According to Kaspersky, African countries should invest in information security education, as this will lead to the creation of more qualified personnel capable of working in the continent's developing digital economy.

The head of Kaspersky Lab also noted that the decision to open a division in Rwanda has a strategic approach, since the country is one of the IT centers in Africa, and the company gets more opportunities for business development in the region.^[17]

2018: Getting tax breaks from Moscow authorities

The Moscow government will provide Kaspersky Lab with tax breaks because the company was given anchor resident status at the Vodny Stadion technopark, Interfax news agency reported. The status was approved today at a meeting of the Presidium of the Moscow Government ^[18].

The status of anchor resident of the "Water Stadium" will allow the company to pay income tax to the city budget at a rate of 12.5% instead of 17%. This is good news against the background of the costs of $12 million that the company will incur when moving the user data center from Moscow to Zurich, as well as against the background of the refusal of the Dutch authorities to use its products, which was reported today by the Reuters news agency.

2017

90 million new viruses reported

In early December 2017, the founder and head of Kaspersky Lab, Yevgeny Kaspersky, announced an exponential increase in the number of cyber threats and predicted the emergence of more than 90 million new malware by the end of the year.

According to Kaspersky, when people think about cybersecurity, they usually mean computers and smartphones, but hackers are increasingly attacking the industrial environment, including Internet of Things systems.

Cyber systems are all around us. We really don't understand how much we depend on them. When you travel by plane or train, when you use the door keys at the hotel. And air conditioners, CCTV cameras and fire alarms are fully computerised... We see a growing number of attacks on the physical environment, including security video cameras, IoT devices, steel mills, power grids, health care institutions, etc., Kaspersky said during a speech at the Fourth World Conference on Internet Governance.

The head of Kaspersky Lab recalled that in 1997, when the company was created, there were only 500 viruses in the world. After 10 years, the Kaspersky Lab database already included more than 2 million malware. Only in 2017, the number of new virus samples may exceed 90 million, he predicts.

Evgeny Kaspersky cited data according to which about 300 thousand new viruses are registered in the world every day. Most of them can be classified as simple viruses that are easy to destroy. In total, there are 500 million "unique virus files" in the world, and malware is becoming more complex.

I would like the global economy to grow as fast as cybercrime, "Kaspersky said.[19]

Opening of the development center in Vladivostok

Kaspersky Lab on November 20, 2017 announced the opening of an R&D center in Vladivostok, which becomes the fourth Russian office of the company^[20]

The main activities of the center will be directly related to antivirus research and the development of vulnerability scanning technologies. The center itself is small: its staff will number only 12 people, some of which will be graduates of universities collaborating with Kaspersky Lab.

 

In October 2017, the company opened^[21] Far Eastern Federal University in a scientific and educational center for training specialists in information security and conducting research work.

Graduates of FEFU, respectively, will become the first candidates for employment in the Far Eastern office of the Laboratory.

Representatives of the information security industry have repeatedly complained about the lack of training in Russian universities. This is due to the fact that the education system simply does not keep up with the changes that are taking place, so that freshly released specialists sometimes have to be retrained "from scratch." But at the same time, universities still give fundamental knowledge, the need for which no one denies. In this regard, information security market players are striving to establish cooperation with higher educational institutions, opening "their" courses and training centers for specialists who will already be "fully ready for use."

Kaspersky Lab has several more R&D centers in the country - in Novosibirsk, St. Petersburg and Moscow. In addition, the company has opened offices in Ireland and Israel over the past two years.

At the same time, the company is experiencing serious difficulties in the American market, which for a long period has been one of the key for it. The use of "Lab" products in government agencies in the United States has recently been prohibited; previously, a similar ban was issued in China.

Launch of Information Openness Initiative

On October 24, 2017, Kaspersky Lab announced the launch of the Global Transparency Initiative. The main goal is to attract the expert community in the field of cybersecurity to validate the integrity and reliability of products, internal processes and business operations of the company.

As part of this initiative, Kaspersky Lab intends to provide the source code of its products, including software update code and antivirus databases, for analysis by independent experts. Thus, the company intends to confirm the transparency of its activities.

Starting the initiative, the company announced its intentions:

• by the end of the first quarter of 2018, begin an independent analysis of the source code, followed by a similar analysis of software updates and antivirus databases;
• independent assessment of the secure development process and strategy to minimize risks in the supplier chain and software - start before the end of the first quarter of 2018;
• development of additional mechanisms for controlling the data processing process - together with independent experts who will assess the compliance of the company's practices with the stated requirements - to begin before the end of the first quarter of 2018;
• Opening three Transparency Centers worldwide to address any cybersecurity issues with customers, partners, and government agencies. In these centers, the company's partners will be able to get information about Kaspersky Lab's software code, product updates, antivirus databases, etc. The first center is scheduled to open in 2018.
• increasing the amount of remuneration in the bug bounty program to $100 thousand for detecting the most serious vulnerabilities in Kaspersky Lab software - start before the end of 2017.

Israeli intelligence agencies hacked Kaspersky Anti-Virus

In early October, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post reported that NSA data was stolen using Kaspersky Anti-Virus. The data was reportedly accessed through the home computer of one of the agency's employees. This employee, sources of publications said, was fired in 2015^[22].

The use of Kaspersky Anti-Virus to steal data from the National Security Agency (NSA) USA became known from the Israeli special services, The New York Times ^[23] about^[24]

According to the interlocutors of the publication, Israeli intelligence officers penetrated the internal network of Kaspersky Lab and discovered the fact of unauthorized access to NSA data.

Israel notified the United States about the incident after which, writes The New York Times, and a decision was made to ban the use of Kaspersky Lab products in American government agencies.

Kaspersky Lab on October 11 once again stated that "it has never helped and will never help any government in the world in cyber espionage attempts."

3,700 employees in 37 offices

Kaspersky Lab celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2017. The company employs more than 3,700 employees in 37 offices on 5 continents. Its solutions are sold in 200 countries and territories of the world, its technologies protect over 400 million home and 270 thousand corporate users.

Center for Research and Development in Jerusalem

Kaspersky Lab opened a research and development (R&D) center in the summer of 2017 based on its office in Jerusalem. The main focus of the center will be the study and analysis of cyber threats for new technologies, such as the Internet of Things and embedded systems, as well as for industrial control systems and connected cars.

The centre in Israel became the company's second R&D laboratory to open overseas in the past year, with a similar centre opened in Ireland in September 2016. Specialists in Israel will work closely with colleagues from other countries and share information about the latest detected cyber risks that threaten companies and individuals.

Falling under Ukrainian sanctions

On May 16, 2017, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, by his decree, enacted the decision of the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) on sanctions against Russian companies and their subsidiaries in Ukraine. In total, 468 legal entities were on the sanctions list, of which 81 were related to the IT sphere. Among the companies that fell under the sanctions was also Kaspersky Lab. Read more here.

Kaspersky Mathematical Gymnasium

On March 7, 2017, Kaspersky Lab announced plans to open the Kaspersky Mathematical Gymnasium on the basis of school No. 10 in the city of Reutov in 2017. The company will organize and sponsor a project, search and involvement of teachers, the development of a special program to study information protection methods. The company's partner in the creation of the school is the aerospace department of the Bauman Moscow State Technical University, located in Reutov. Training will be free.

Arrest of top manager Ruslan Stoyanov

On January 25, 2017, it became known about the detention of a top manager. Kaspersky LabRuslana Stoyanova He was arrested state as part of a treason case. More. here

2016

Closing of the Ukrainian office

In mid-December 2016, it became known about the termination of the work of the Ukrainian representative office of Kaspersky Lab due to the sanctions of Kyiv.

It was decided to close the regional office due to the fact that the country's government has limited the foreign economic activity of Kaspersky Lab Ukraine, - reports TASS with reference to a representative of Kaspersky Lab. Yulia Krivosheina

According to her, the products will be sold in Ukraine through distribution channels, so the liquidation of the local division will not affect Kaspersky Lab customers and partners. At the same time, the vendor has not yet decided on the further fate of the employees of the office being closed.

On December 14, 2016 , a statement was published in the official newspaper of the Verkhovna Rada "Voice of Ukraine," according to which Kaspersky Lab Ukraine LLC was liquidated by the decision of the owner. Claims of creditors are accepted within two months from the date of publication of the announcement (until February 14, 2017) at the address LLC.

Ukraine included Kaspersky Lab in the sanctions list in September 2016. In December, an official decree was issued to restrict the company's foreign economic activity.

Kaspersky Lab fell under the sanctions of Kyiv due to possible "real or potential threats to national interests and security, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine." In this regard, the company could not participate in public procurement in this country, but individuals and legal entities could buy the company's products.

In 2015, the revenue of Kaspersky Lab Ukraine LLC amounted to UAH 26.1 million (about 60.4 million rubles), which is 34% more than a year earlier, net profit increased by one and a half times - to UAH 3.1 million (7.2 million rubles).^[25]

Plan for the development of a platform for the Internet of Things in cooperation with Taizen.Ru

Kaspersky Lab has joined the association Taizen.Ru"," uniting Russian developers of IT solutions based on open operating system Tizen for mobile devices Internet and things (IE/Internet of Things/IoT). As part of its membership in the association, the company intends to work on the creation of a secure platform for IoT devices, which is based on. OS Tizen It is expected that the first users of such devices will be corporate customers.

"The Internet of Things is developing extremely quickly. Today, many devices are connected to the Global Network: in addition to traditional computers and smartphones, TVs and video cameras, printers and routers, medical and industrial equipment, home appliances, wearable gadgets and even cars have Internet access. However, all of them were created without taking into account the need to provide reliable protection against cyber threats. Our experiments and research show that attackers can hack and reconfigure IoT devices without much difficulty - and all due to the lack of any security system in these devices. In this regard, it is now very possible to develop a separate approach to protecting IoT devices, think over possible threat vectors and create a specialized security system for the Internet of Things. This is exactly what we will do in the framework of cooperation with the Taizen.Ru association, "explained Andrey Dukhvalov, head of the department of perceptual technologies at Kaspersky Lab.

A Pseudo--Kaspersky Lab appeared in Russia

In the summer of 2016, the company of the same name was registered in Moscow (see more separate article).

2015

Kaspersky Lab has found a new spy virus

In mid-February 2015, it became known that the American authorities have a special virus at their disposal that can monitor the actions of PC users while in hidden sections of hard drives. Spyware software found antivirus company Kaspersky Lab.

According to its experts, a truly innovative virus has been created that can reprogram the factory firmware of computer hard drives. Thanks to this, attackers can control the operation of a laptop or desktop even after formatting the drive or reinstalling the operating system. Interestingly, the program can be hidden in hard drives from well-known manufacturers such as Toshiba, Western Digital, Seagate and IBM.

Bloomberg: LC shares data on users with the special services of the Russian Federation

March 19, 2015 it became known about the cooperation of Kaspersky Lab with the Russian special services. Former and current employees of the antivirus company told Bloomberg about this. Yevgeny Kaspersky denies that these relations go beyond the legal framework^[26].

Company Office, 2014

Since 2012, high-ranking managers have left Kaspersky Lab, whose place in some cases was replaced by people who maintain ties with Russian military or intelligence structures, writes Bloomberg^[27]. Some of them actively help the FSB in criminal investigations, using information about 400 million customers of the company. The agency refers to information received from six current and former employees of the firm, they refuse to publicly discuss this topic for fear of reprisals.

According to Bloomberg, the founder of the company, Yevgeny Kaspersky, a former KGB officer, goes to the bathhouse weekly in a group of 5-10 people, among whom are employees of the Russian special services. The businessman said in an interview that group trips to the bathhouse perform exclusively social funkts​iyu: "When I go to the bathhouse, they become friends."

Eugene Kaspersky, 2014

Four former insiders told the agency that the company's ties with the intelligence services intensified sharply after two spikes in the departure of top managers. The first such case, they said, occurred in 2012, when Kaspersky abandoned an IPO partnership with US investment firm General Atlantic. After that, the commercial director of the company, Harry Kondakov, distributed a letter for internal use by e-mail, indicating that only Russians would hold high-ranking posts, two people told Bloomberg that they had seen this newsletter. Kaspersky Lab denies the existence of such a letter.

In 2014, Kaspersky fired a group of high-ranking managers, according to a Bloomberg publication, including technical director Nikolai Grebennikov and North American president Steve Orenberg, who asked the founder of the company to retain only the post of chairman of the board and resign as CEO.

Igor Chekunov, deputy head of the company for legal issues, regularly joins Kaspersky's campaigns in the bathhouse and is a key person in interacting with the Russian government, three sources in the company told Bloomberg. The agency claims that since 2013, Chekunov has been leading a group of ten specialists who study information from clients subjected to hacker attacks and provide technical support to the FSB and other Russian government agencies. This group has access to data from all the company's systems, Bloomberg explains. According to Kaspersky Lab spokesman Sarah Kitsos, Chekunov worked in the KGB border department, then served in the police.

Chris Doggett, managing director of Kaspersky Lab's North American branch in Boston, claims that all information is anonymous. Two people familiar with the technology told Bloomberg that information on the identification of individual computers can be obtained from this data and this method was used to help the FSB in investigations.

Bloomberg noted that the published information could cause difficulties for the Laboratory: the company's business in Russia is complicated by the economic crisis, while in the current political climate it already receives fewer orders from American contractors.

Evgeny Kaspersky said that representatives of government agencies cannot link the information collected by his company to individual customers. According to him, he does not have to worry about the growing pressure to demonstrate loyalty to Vladimir Putin.

"I am not the person with whom you can talk about Russian realities, because I live in cyberspace," said Evgeny Kaspersky.

A still from an interview with Kaspersky to Bloomberg, 2015

In

his blog , the head of the company wrote:

Firstly, a third of the article is purely reliable, public facts that can be checked on our website, in our open reports and other public documents. Secondly, which was very strange (this is Bloomberg!), A significant part of the material is not true. Outright lies. Speculation, assumptions, conclusions based on incorrect information and falsely interpreted. Sue them, or what? Thirdly, the rest is exactly what Bloomberg "accumulated." Secret, unknown to anyone information of extreme value for the investigation, and which unequivocally confirms the fact that I am a Russian spy. Here is this information (if you weed out all the other figota): I go to the bathhouse (when in Moscow), we dismiss managers (what company does not have this?), Many in the company speak Russian (alas, this is a genetic burn), Our legal director served at the age of 18 at the border. That's it.

Allegations of counterfeiting viruses to sabotage the work of competitors

On August 14, 2015, it became known that for 10 years Kaspersky Lab had been faking viruses in order to harm competitors. Two former employees of a Russian company told Reuters about this.

According to them, for several weeks or months, LK specialists developed sabotage projects. They were tasked with trying to decompile competitors' anti-virus software to understand how it could consider absolutely harmless files dangerous.

It was decided to use special aggregators, with the help of which manufacturers of cybersecurity solutions share information about malware with each other. Such a service is VirusTotal.

There, LC anonymously sent "an important part of the software of any computer" a file specially infected with malicious code. Antiviruses of other companies, often borrowing other people's technologies instead of independently identifying threats, began to consider even non-modified versions of this file on computers as dangerous, issued false messages about threats and quarantined important files, disrupting the work of users.

Thus, as noted, the founder of LC Evgeny Kaspersky, wanted to take revenge on Microsoft, AVG,  Avast and other competitors for copying the company's technologies, as well as increase its market share. The LK denies such provocations:

"

Our company has never run any secret campaign to fool competitors and generate false positives to damage their reputation in the market. Such acts are unethical and dishonest, and their legitimacy is at least doubtful. "

Moreover, according to Yevgeny Kaspersky, his company itself became a victim of such sabotage in November 2012, when its software mistakenly signaled viruses in the files of Tencent, Mail.ru and Steam. Representatives from Avast, Microsoft and AVG refrained from commenting.^[28]

Kaspersky urged to "wet" competitors

On August 28, 2015, it became known that Reuters had at its disposal a fragment of the correspondence between the founder of Kaspersky Lab (KL LC Yevgeny Kaspersky and one of his assistants. During an e-mail conversation, a well-known entrepreneur urged to "wet the toilet" competitors from AVG Technologies.

The correspondence dates back to 2009. In it, Kaspersky said the following:

"To be honest, I

will feel very bad when AVG goes public and makes a billion. They won't say thank you to you or me - don't even hope. Wetting is one of the methods that we will definitely use in combination with others. "

It follows from Kaspersky's correspondence that LC has already used the methods it called for.

"We have already" wet "-  in China. In 2002-2003, we put an end to the movement of one of the market leaders, "the founder of LK wrote to his assistant

.

As one of the former employees of LC told the publication, the company carried out attacks on the Chinese company Beijing Jiangmin New Science & Technology Co for copying virus identification, which was produced by LC, without concluding a license agreement.

According to former LC employees, by the expression "wet in the toilet," which was borrowed from one of Vladimir Putin's statements, Kaspersky meant sabotage of AVG, which would lead to serious errors in the company's work.

In mid-August 2015, ex-LC employees told Reuters that over the years the company had shared false information about which files were dangerous to computers with competitors, including Microsoft, AVG and Avast. The Russian software manufacturer denied the allegations, saying the company had "never campaigned to mislead competitors and force their decisions to issue false positive positives."

As for the desire to undermine the work of AVG, it, as follows from the published correspondence, was associated with Yevgeny Kaspersky's dissatisfaction with luring LC employees with a competitor.

In a comment to the publication, a representative of the LoC said that such emails "may not be reliable and are taken from sources with hidden goals."^[29]

Sanctions in Ukraine

On September 16, 2015, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko signed an addendum to the decree banning public procurement from several dozen companies, including the Russian Kaspersky Lab and Dr.Web.

These companies are prohibited from selling their products to state institutions and enterprises in Ukraine, since these decisions, as Poroshenko's decree suggests, pose a potential threat to the country's national security and contribute to terrorist activities. Read more here.

2013: Computer Incident Investigation Service Launched

On May 21, 2013, Kaspersky Lab announced the launch of a service to investigate computer incidents for business. Incidents in the investigation of which the company is ready to assist include targeted attacks on companies, hunting for valuable confidential information, DDoS attacks, fraud in remote banking systems .

The new service involves three stages of work: an operational analysis of a computer incident, its investigation and, if necessary, expert support of a criminal case.

As part of the first of them, a possible picture of what happened is restored, it is established which nodes IT infrastructures were involved in the incident, digital evidence is recorded, as well as a study of primary information about the incident and a full analysis. malware Based on the results of the work, Kaspersky Lab will prepare a detailed report, which can serve as a sufficient basis for contacting law enforcement agencies.

At the second stage, an analysis of all technical and financial aspects of the incident is carried out, a crime scheme is established and the persons involved in the incident are identified. Following the investigation, Kaspersky Lab experts will prepare data confirming these facts and issue a report to the company, which the police will be able to use to conduct a pre-investigation check and investigation within the framework of an already initiated criminal case.

As part of the third stage of the service, Kaspersky Lab specialists can act as a representative of the affected organization, provide all the necessary information and technical support for the investigation of the criminal case.

As TAdviser explained in Kaspersky Lab, the company expects the greatest demand for the new service from large businesses, especially among representatives of the banking sector.

"Despite the fact that, first of all, the service will be of interest to Russian companies, in many cases we will also be able to work with companies in the CIS and Baltic countries," the company added.

When TAdviser asked about the cost of the new service, Kaspersky Lab representatives replied that it depends on the complexity of the specific case and the set of services the company needs. If we talk about the minimum price, then the investigation of the incident by Kaspersky Lab specialists "can cost 110 thousand rubles," the company said.

Regarding the form of service provision, it can be either a one-time service or packages from the formed number of services for annual subscriptions, added to Kaspersky Lab.

Group-IB, which specializes in investigating high-tech crimes, told TAdviser that it does not consider Kaspersky Lab as competitors in the field of investigating computer incidents.

"There are several factors involved. Group-IB has been investigating incidents and high-tech crimes since 2003, while Kaspersky Lab, first of all, has been and remains a software manufacturer, "says Ilya Sachkov, founder and CEO of Group-IB. "The cybercrime investigation in our company is carried out by 80% of employees, in Kaspersky Lab the number of employees is responsible for the development of this area ten times less."

Sachkov adds that his company performs an examination of 70-80% of the most difficult and resonant cases in the field of high-tech crimes in the Russian Federation: "it is from our cases that the most high-profile detentions in the entire history of computer incidents in Russia and the world occur."

According to the general director of Group-IB, other factors in connection with which his company does not consider Kaspersky Lab as a competitor in this market are that Group-IB has the "correct infrastructure" precisely for investigating computer crimes and a team of experts whom the company "carefully chose from a huge number of candidates from all over Russia."

2012

LC buys back all shares previously acquired by General Atlantic fund

Kaspersky Lab bought back all shares previously acquired by the General Atlantic private equity fund, as well as shares owned by some minority shareholders, who also expressed a desire to participate in recapitalization.

New Year's corporate party in a big way

On December 14, 2012 , Kaspersky Lab hosted a corporate evening dedicated to the celebration of the New Year. The fact that it is customary for the company to celebrate this date on a large scale was written in its blog in LiveJournal by the founder and head of antivirus developer Yevgeny Kaspersky#^[30]

"It turned out oh-oh! Some tell me that it is high time to sell tickets for our corporate parties, expensive, "he wrote on his blog, sharing his impressions of the holiday with readers. According to him, the New Year's show was organized in the rented Stadium hall near the Socol metro station in Moscow. The hall accommodated about 1.5 thousand employees of the company and invited guests.

The highlight of the program was the circus show, which was attended by 80 artists, of which only 30 were professionals. The remaining 50 are Kaspersky Lab employees who rehearsed for two months in order to also take part in the speech. "My old dream has come true - to arrange something like the" Circus of the Sun, "with dances and clown outfits," said Evgeny Kaspersky.

The evening ended with a traditional annual award for a number of nominations ("Expert of the Year," "Project of the Year," "Team of the Year") and a concert by the Spleen group.

2011

Certification of products in the FSB

In February 2011, Kaspersky Lab announced the certification Kaspersky of Administration Kit 8.0, Kaspersky Anti-Virus 6.0 for Windows Servers MP4, Kaspersky Anti-Virus 6.0 for Windows Workstations MP4 products. Federal Security Service of Russia The issued compliance certificates certify that Kaspersky Lab solutions meet the established requirements FSBRussia for antivirus tools and can be used for information information protection containing state secrets, Kaspersky Lab said in a statement.

In May 2011, Kaspersky Lab announced the certification of its solutions for protecting network infrastructure (Internet gateways, mail and file servers) for compliance with the requirements of the Federal Security Service (FSB) of Russia. Thus, the company has certified the full range of solutions for comprehensive antivirus protection of the corporate network. Kaspersky Lab's list of FSB-certified antivirus solutions includes Kaspersky Security 8.0 for Microsoft Exchange Servers, Kaspersky Anti-Virus 8.0 for Linux File Servers, Kaspersky Anti-Virus 8.0 for Lotus Domino, Kaspersky Anti-Virus 8.0 for Microsoft ISA Server and Forefront TMG Standard Edition, as well as Kaspersky Anti-Virus 8.0 for Windows Lab. "

Part of Natalia Kasperskaya's package goes to the Americans

In January 2011, it became known that the American private equity fund General Atlantic acquired a large stake in Kaspersky Lab. This is the first time in the history of an antivirus developer that a professional institutional investor has entered the company.

The parties do not disclose either the size of the American stake in Kaspersky Lab or the amount paid, but they report that upon completion of the transaction, General Atlantic will become the second largest shareholder in the Lab. Fund representative - Managing Director and Head of the European Division John Bernstein (John Bernstein) will join the Board of Directors of Kaspersky Lab.

The largest shareholder of the company will remain Evgeny Kaspersky, who has a controlling stake.

Evgeny Buyakin, executive director of Kaspersky Lab, told CNews that an agreement on the sale of shares has been signed, but "the closure of the transaction still requires confirmation of shareholders, as well as certain legal formalities." This is expected to happen within 2-3 weeks.

Part of the shares transferred to the General Atlantic fund previously belonged to one of the previous shareholders of the company, the other part, which Yevgeny Buyakin called "symbolic," was issued additionally. According to CNews, the main seller of the shares was Natalya Kasperskaya, co-founder and chairman of the board of directors of Lab. Shares of Evgeny Kaspersky did not participate in the deal.

Natalya Kasperskaya told CNews that the share of the new investor in the Laboratory will be "smaller" than 20%. According to her, she has a significant part of the company's shares, and she has no plans to leave the chair of the board of directors "unless the shareholders make another decision."

The initiator of the transaction was General Atlantic: its executive director John Bernstein says that the fund has long been looking for a manufacturer of security solutions for investment and "about a year ago turned to Kaspersky Lab with a proposal for cooperation."

At the request of CNews, the capitalization of Kaspersky was estimated by the chairman of the board of Finam Vladislav Kochetkov, who believes that the entire company is now worth $1.5 billion with an estimated revenue of $540 million in 2010.

Sergei Belousov, founder of the Runa Capital fund and executive director of Parallels, also believes that "most likely, Kaspersky Lab's revenue is more than $500 million." He found it difficult to assess the capitalization of the company, since Kaspersky is "growing very well and its profitability is unknown." According to Belousov, the Laboratory is more "focused" not on profitability, but on growth, which greatly affects its value.

Based on different estimates of capitalization and the share of securities sold, the upper limit of the proceeds from the sale of shares may range widely from $200 to $300 million.

General Atlantic's signature investment strategy is to enter and exit high-growth companies after an IPO. However, according to Yevgeny Buyakin, this strategy of the fund does not follow the upcoming public placement of Kaspersky Lab papers in the near future. "Currently, the company does not plan a public offering of shares, however, it considers the IPO as one of the possible ways to develop in the future," he explained.

In

early 2012, Kaspersky Lab finally abandoned the idea of ​ ​ going to an IPO. In addition, she decided to redeem her shares from the American investment fund General Atrantic, which a year ago became the second largest shareholder of the company after its head and founder Yevgeny Kaspersky, as well as from minority shareholders who wished to participate in recapitalization.

2010: Antivirus No. 3 in the world in the market of home users

According to the results of the annual report "Market Share: Security Software, Worldwide, 2010" by Gartner, published on March 30, 2011, Kaspersky Lab increased its share in the IT security market in the segment of home users to 9% and entered the top three world leaders. The company has more than 1000 specialists. Read more here.

2009

Antivirus No. 4 in the world

According to IDC, according to the results of 2009, the company took fourth place in the top of world antivirus manufacturers in terms of revenue ($380 million) and the first in terms of its growth (44.5%).

Kaspersky Lab clients at this time use a wide range of additional services. The antivirus database of the program is updated hourly, and the anti-spam database is updated from 12 to 24 times a day. The company's customers are provided with round-the-clock technical support in several languages ​ ​ (by phone and e-mail).

Kaspersky Lab designs, implements and accompanies corporate antivirus systems and information security systems that meet any specific business requirements.

The company focuses on the protection of medium and small enterprises, but among the clients there are many large Russian and international government and commercial organizations. These are the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, Sberbank, TATNEFT, the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation, the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation (Federal Treasury), Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, Ministry of Science and Technology Industry of the Russian Federation, Ministry of Taxes and Duties of the Russian Federation, Ministry of Regional Development of the Russian Federation, Office of the President of the Russian Federation, Ministry of Agriculture, Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, Ministry of Regional Development of the Russian Federation, La Poste (France), Airbus (EC), Stemcor (UK), Golden Telecom, Polish National Security Bureau, French Ministry of Education, Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, BBC Worldwide (UK), Telecom Italia Mobile, Faber-Castell (Germany), France Telecom and other companies.

Product Line Overview

In 2009, Kaspersky Lab presented a wide range of solutions for providing protection against viruses, spam and hacker attacks that take into account the needs of all categories of clients. The company creates products for both home users and large corporations.

Kaspersky Lab anti-virus software modules protect all potential objects of virus attacks - workstations, file and web servers, mail gateways, firewalls and pocket computers.

Home products

• Kaspersky Internet Security is a program for comprehensive protection of PCs from viruses and all other types of malware, as well as from hacker attacks and spam.

• Kaspersky Anti-Virus is a program for protecting your computer from viruses, Trojans and spyware, as well as other malware.

• Kaspersky Mobile Security - a solution for protecting a mobile device from network attacks, malicious ON and SMS spam, as well as for protecting data on a smartphone.

Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2009 and Kaspersky Internet Security 2009 are representatives of a new generation of Kaspersky Lab personal products. Kaspersky Internet Security 2009 protects your personal computer from the penetration of all types of viruses and spyware thanks to a number of new features, including scanning email and Internet traffic "on the fly," a proactive protection system against new malware, protection against new types of malware - "rootkit," etc.

Office Products

Comprehensive Enterprise Network Security:

Kaspersky Open Space Security - a line of products for organizing comprehensive protection of corporate networks, includes:

• Kaspersky Work Space Security - centralized protection of workstations, laptops and smartphones in the corporate network and beyond
• Kaspersky Business Space Security - protection of workstations, smartphones and file servers.

• Kaspersky Enterprise Space Security - protection of workstations and smartphones, as well as file and mail servers from all types of modern Internet threats.
• Kaspersky Total Space Security - protection of all nodes of the corporate network.

Protection of individual network nodes:

• Kaspersky Anti-Virus Second Opinion Solution is a centralized check of Windows workstations on the corporate network without coming into conflict with other installed Antivirus software.
• Kaspersky Security for Internet gateways - to ensure secure access to the Internet for all employees of the organization, automatically removing malicious and potentially dangerous applications from the data flow to the network using HTTP/FTP protocols.
• Kaspersky Anti-Virus for file servers - protect servers running Windows, Novell NetWare, Linux and Samba from all types of malware.
• Kaspersky Anti-Virus for Windows Servers Enterprise Edition - protect data on servers running Microsoft Windows (including versions x86-64) from malware.
• Kaspersky Anti-Virus for MIMEsweeper - providing anti-virus scanning, as well as message treatment using the Clearswift MIMESweeper content filtering system.
• Kaspersky Security for Mail Servers is a solution for protecting email and collaboration servers from malware and spam.
• Kaspersky Anti-Spam is a solution for protecting users of corporate mail systems and public mail services from massive unsolicited correspondence - spam.

In 1999, Kaspersky Lab was the first in the world to develop anti-virus protection for workstations, file servers and application servers running OS Linux/. FreeBSD For 2009, the company is a supplier of solutions in the field information security of the most LinuxFreeBSD popular/-systems. The range of products includes solutions such as for Kaspersky Anti-Virus Linux Mail Server, Kaspersky Mail Gateway, Kaspersky Anti-Spam Kaspersky Anti-Virus for Proxy Server, for Kaspersky Anti-Virus Linux File Server & Workstation and for Kaspersky Anti-Virus Samba Server.

Kaspersky Lab has Kaspersky Hosted Security for corporate clients, which provides protection of the corporate network on terms and conditions. outsourcing

2003

Founding InfoWatch

The company pays special attention to countering internal threats. In 2003, InfoWatch was established, which develops, implements and maintains systems for protecting corporate confidential information from theft, destruction and other illegal actions. InfoWatch has technologies to neutralize internal threats that allow you to control any data transactions within the corporate network and prevent those that do not comply with enterprise security policies.

Run hourly anti-virus database updates

In the period from 2003 to 2004, the company was the first in the world to release hourly updates to antivirus databases, which made it possible to reduce the response time to new threats. New iChecker and iStream technologies have been developed that allow you to scan only new and changed files, which has reduced the time for anti-virus scanning. A special utility has been released to remove the Cabir.A worm from an infected mobile device.

In 2005-2006, a number of new technologies were developed, including: proactive protection module, web antivirus, self-defense mechanism, technology for treating active infection, etc.

In 2007, a fourth-generation heuristic analyzer was developed to detect new unknown viruses by emulating their execution in a secure environment. The updated proactive protection module implements a unique technology for detecting keyloggers (keyboard interceptors). Since August 8, 2007, Natalya Kasperskaya became the chairman of the board of directors of the company - the highest management body, Evgeny Kaspersky became the CEO of the company.

In 2008, an infection prevention mechanism was developed that allows you to control all programs executed on the user's computer and, depending on the degree of trust in them, limit their rights in the system. In addition, Kaspersky Lab became the first company in the world to provide its clients with an antivirus solution for enterprise-class file servers, certified to run both Windows Server 2008 and Citrix XenApp (Citrix Presentation Server) 4.0 & 4.5 (32-bit and 64-bit).

New versions of products and fundamentally new products have also been released - such as Kaspersky Security for PDA, which protects data on handheld computers not only from viruses, but also from unauthorized access.

2002: Firewall and Kaspersky Anti-Spam Release

At the end of 2002, users were introduced to the Kaspersky Anti-Hacker personal firewall and the Kaspersky Anti-Spam anti-spam system.

2001: Product Line Development for Different Consumer Groups

In 2001, a differentiated product line was developed, including products for home users, for medium and small businesses and for corporate clients.

2000: Changing the product name to Kaspersky Anti-Virus

In November 2000, the company officially announced the change of the name and logo of the product that received a new name - "Kaspersky Anti-Virus." By this time, Kaspersky Anti-Virus was protecting not only personal computers, but also workstations, file and mail servers running Windows, Linux and FreeBSD, Novell NetWare networks, and firewalls.

1999: First foreign office in Britain

Main article: Kaspersky business in Europe

In June 1999, the first foreign representative office of the company opened - Kaspersky Labs UK in Cambridge, UK. In the Russian antivirus market, Kaspersky Lab's share has increased to 50%.

1998: New Antivirus Kernel

In 1998, a new antivirus kernel was released, which made it possible to significantly expand the functionality of the antivirus, a mechanism for unpacking files with malware was implemented, and external antivirus databases were also used for the first time.

1997: Kaspersky leaves KAMI with the team and creates his own company

In 1997, Kaspersky and five other people from his team left KAMI and established their own company, Kaspersky Lab.

Natalia Kasperskaya became the CEO of the new company. In the same year, AVP antivirus technology was licensed by Finnish DataFellows for its own antivirus F-Secure.

1996: Licensing the core of Germany's G Data and Japan's Vintage Solutions

In September 1996, the AVP antivirus kernel was licensed for use in the antivirus product of the German company G Data and the Japanese Vintage Solutions.

1994: Natalya Kasperskaya headed the antivirus department of KAMI

In 1994, the antivirus department was headed by Natalya Kasperskaya. In the same year, AVP took part in the first international testing of virus protection products conducted by the Hamburg Test Center. The debut of the Russian software product turned out to be more than successful - it became the absolute record holder for the level of detection and neutralization of viruses.

1992: The emergence of the name AVP

In April 1992, additions to the antivirus program "-V" were released, under the names "-D" - an antivirus monitor for DOS and "-U" - a set of utilities for processing viruses.

After some time, the program was called "AVP" (AntiViral Toolkit Pro). The name of the antivirus program - AVP (AntiViral Toolkit Pro) - turned out due to a typo by Yevgeny Kaspersky. Initially, the program was supposed to be called ATP, but when it was sent for testing to the University of Hamburg, Kaspersky mistakenly named the AVP.zip archive instead of ATP. Under this name, the program went to Hamburg. After some time, user reviews began to come from abroad. Someone wrote that the AVP program is very good, someone noticed the shortcomings and offered to eliminate them. Kaspersky at first did not understand what program was in question, because his product is called ATP, and when he figured it out, he wrote to Hamburg with a request to urgently rename AVP to ATP.

"Late," they answered him. "The program has long been on the university's FTP server and appears under this name in all documents and sites."

This is how the trademark appeared as a result of the typo, which later became very popular.

1990: Kaspersky releases the first antivirus and goes to work at Kami

In 1990, Eugene Kaspersky released the first version of the antivirus program "-V."

In May 1991, Kaspersky joined the computer company KAMI, where an antivirus department was created. A team of developers was gradually formed, which included Alexey De-Monderik and Vadim Bogdanov.

1989: Kaspersky computer infected with virus

Main article: How and why Kaspersky became Kaspersky. TAdviser investigation

In 1989, Evgeny Kaspersky's computer was infected with viruses, one of which he decided to save on a floppy disk to find out how it works. The antivirus programs that existed at the time were primitive, so Kaspersky studied the virus and wrote his own program to treat it. After a while, a colleague brought him a new virus, which was also cured on its own.

Notes