Kaspersky Lab

(To Francesco Rugolo)
18/05/19

Kaspersky Lab is founded in 1997 in Moscow, Russia by Eugene Kaspersky, current CEO, Natalya Kaspersky and Alexey De-Monderick.
Kaspersky Lab is a multinational company specialized in endpoint security, cybersecurity e internet security and is a developer of the well-known antivirus.

The company has its headquarters in Moscow, is active in 200 countries and has more than 3900 employees in 35 offices in 31 countries and in the 2017 has achieved a turnover of 698 million dollars. According to data provided by the company the number of users using their products is around 400 million.

In 1989 Eugene Kaspersky develops the first version of his antivirus with the aim of fighting the Cascade virus, a virus that infected files with ".COM" extension.
Years later, in the 1997, Eugene, his wife Natalya and De-Monderick founded the company that grew rapidly in the following years, thanks also to the favorable opinions of the critics regarding the reliability of their products, in fact in just two years from 1998 to 2000 the company saw an increase in 280% sales.
Today, Kaspaersky Labs is the fourth largest IT company in the world by revenue and the first in Europe, specializing in information security for the public.

There were some scandals in the 2015 when company employees accused the company of having introduced into the virus database VirusTotal specially modified files to activate "false positive" alarms and cause damage to opposing companies.

The accusations were denied by the founder Eugene Kaspersky who also denied the validity of the emails that his former employees had published.

The 13 September 2017 President Trump signed a decree prohibiting the use of Kaspersky software in computers and other devices of government institutions due to the accusations that blamed the company for collaborating with the Russian authorities in order to appropriate confidential information from the computers of government employees.

There have been numerous rumors about the company's collaboration with personalities closely related to Russian intelligence and to counter these rumors the company took legal action but these were rejected by American judges.

Not only in America, but also in Europe the ban on Kaspersky products in the 2017 was put to the vote, the company always denied the accusations and recently, the 12 April 2019 the European Commission admitted its mistakes, declaring that the accusations that were brought to the company are not based on any proven evidence. Obviously this will not reimburse Kaspersky Labs for all the losses incurred due to the aforementioned scandals but at least will partially bring justice to the company and its founder.

Kaspersky Lab is constantly engaged in the fight against APT (Advanced Persistent Threat) that attack companies and governments around the world, and for about two years it has been publishing reports every three months, illustrating their growth and changes, based on their intelligence work. with particular attention to the areas of origin of the most known and dangerous APTs, such as those from China and the Middle East and whose activity has intensified in recent times.

To learn more:
https://www.kaspersky.it/
https://www.kaspersky.it/blog/che-cose-una-apt/1070/