5 minutes with… Kaspersky Lab

In our 5 minutes with profiles, MEF members talk about their business, their aspirations for the future and the wider mobile industry. In the second of our profiles this week, Kirill Zelenski, Global Business Development Director, Mobile;  introduces Kaspersky Lab.

What does Kaspersky Lab do?

Kaspersky Lab is the world’s largest privately held vendor of endpoint protection solutions. Throughout its more than 16-year history Kaspersky Lab has remained an innovator in IT security and provides effective digital security solutions for both desktop and mobile endpoints to large enterprises, SMBs and consumers. Kaspersky Lab provides protection against cyber-threats: those from malware, spam, hackers, DDoS attacks, sophisticated cyber-espionage tools, and cyber-weapons. Our motto is: “We are here to save the World”. You can visit our website or B2B Blog for a wealth of information and other channels about us.

When did Kaspersky Lab launch and what growth have you seen?

Kaspersky Lab was founded in 1997 by a team of information security specialists led by Eugene Kaspersky. Today it is one of the fastest growing IT security vendors in the world. Firmly positioned as one of the top four leading antivirus vendors*, Kaspersky Lab continues to improve its market position. According to the company’s 2012 unaudited financial results, Kaspersky Lab’s global revenue grew by 3% compared to the previous year and reached $628 million. With its holding company registered in the United Kingdom, Kaspersky Lab operates in almost 200 countries and territories, providing protection for over 300 million users worldwide.

What are your main goals?

Kaspersky Lab goal is to become security standard of mobile industry via broad cooperation with vendors, mobile operators, infrastructure providers and mobile developers.

Where do you see Kaspersky in three years’ time?

We see Kaspersky Lab as security technology provider by default in most significant areas, serving hundreds of millions (billions) of users.

What aspect of mobile is most exciting to you right now?

Total Globalisation and merging of everything. Seamless integration of different kind of devices and people’s life. Mobile is everywhere already, total subscription is more than planet population, and mobilisation of people’s life is just started.

What’s the most critical issue that will hit mobile within the next 12 months?

We see the exponential growth of hacker’s attacks and new malware. Growth of mobile payments/banking, connected healthcare devices, connected homes and cars will increase amount of people trying to steal money and private information.

Apart from your own, which mobile companies are the ones to watch in the year ahead?

Google. They will surprise us not once.

Kirill Zelenski is Global Business Development Director of Mobile at Kaspersky Lab - Visit their Website. Kiril is one of several candidates standing for the MEF Global Board Elections next week – find out more.

* The company was rated fourth in the IDC rating Worldwide Endpoint Security Revenue by Vendor, 2012. The rating was published in the IDC report “Worldwide Endpoint Security 2013–2017 Forecast and 2012 Vendor Shares (IDC #242618, August 2013).