Eugene Kaspersky
(Russian Federation)
Head of Anti-Virus Researcher, Kaspersky Labs

Challenges we face in today’s cyber world

The threat to business and personal information assets is radically changing. And with that change comes a growing risk to businesses of every size. The threat began with hooligans seeking notoriety or simply creating havoc wherever they could. But these threats are moving into a totally new realm. It has become a for-profit endeavor that ranges from personal identity theft to corporate espionage. The threat in its mildest forms results in disruption of day-to-day business, taking a significant toll on the profitability of companies of all sizes.

By 2002, email and digital transactions had become as common in businesses as the telephone. The Internet allowed for a whole new class of transactions to take place using e-mail and digital money. Digital financial transactions were not new to financial institutions. However, the increasing use of the "wide-open" Internet as the transport, coupled with the growing popularity of digital transactions with businesses and individuals, represented a major change.

Digital threats can originate from any point on the globe and come in seemingly infinite forms, many of which are not widely understood. While the Internet enabled a new era in online convenience and efficiency, it also increased the threat to the financial assets of both businesses and individuals.

Today, trade secrets are often stolen digitally. Databases can be hacked, or computer spyware can be used to siphon off information created or accessed by any employee. Physically destroying a building is one way to cripple a business; a denial of service (DoS) attack is a digital equivalent that can bring a business to its knees in short order. The operatives behind the threats are no longer just pranksters. Digital exploits have become a real business, run by real professionals, with potentially staggering payoffs.

How and why has the threat evolved? What can be done to ward off this increasingly dangerous threat? The presentation of Eugene Kaspersky, Head of Anti-Virus Research of Kaspersky Lab, a famous player at the global anti-virus market, will describe the main trends in modern IT threats and potential ways of struggle against them.

 

Born in Novorossiysk , Russia , Eugene graduated from the Institute of Cryptography , Telecommunications and Computer Science and worked at a multi-disciplinary scientific research institute until 1991. He began studying computer viruses in 1989, when the Cascade virus was detected on his computer.

From 1991 to 1997 Eugene worked at the KAMI Information Technologies Center where he developed the AVP antivirus project with a group of associates (AVP was renamed Kaspersky Anti-Virus in November 2000). Eugene Kaspersky became a co-founder of Kaspersky Lab in 1997.

Today Eugene Kaspersky is one of the world's leading experts in the information security field: he has written a large number of articles and reviews covering the problem of computer virology and speaks regularly at specialized seminars and conferences all over the world. Eugene is a member of the Computer Antivirus Researchers' Organization (CARO); the global association of leading antivirus experts.