Kaspersky Puts Spotlight On Cyber-Immunity

Eugene Kaspersky, chief executive of his eponymous cybersecurity firm, believes the way forward globally is for companies to evolve from cybersecurity to the wider umbrella of cyber-immunity. Cybersecurity today is not just about protecting endpoint devices. Rather, it is about developing an ecosystem where everything connected is protected, and ensuring that all the systems are secure by design—a concept that Kaspersky calls “cyber-immunity”.

He made the observation while announcing the opening of cybersecurity firm Kaspersky’s first transparency centre in the Malaysian town of Cyberjaya, in partnership with CyberSecurity Malaysia—the nation’s cybersecurity specialist agency.

The new centre of Kaspersky is its first in the Asia-Pacific region.

The transparency centre is part of Kaspersky’s Global Transparency Initiative. Under the same, Kaspersky has also been developing the Bug Bounty Programme, through which it has resolved 66 bugs reported by researchers and awarded almost $45,000 in bounty rewards, the firm said.

In his presentation, Eugene Kaspersky showed that “general malware” today comprises 99.9% of cyberattacks. He also pointed out that from 50 new viruses being detected in one day in 1998, Kaspersky now detects about 3,80,000 new ones in a single day. “In the 2.5 days I have been here (in Malaysia), about one million new ones have been detected,” he said. According to Kaspersky, the only way to prevent cyberattacks is by educating people. “The second thing to do is to use good security for both your internet and smartphones,” he added.

Anton Shingarev, vice president of public affairs at Kaspersky, pointed out that when something goes wrong (cyberattack), questions arise as to who will take care of financial risks and also of political risks now.

“The question is how to overcome that and geopolitics. If you put it all together, it comes down to two main concerns—software and data integrity,” he explained.

Shingarev said Kaspersky has two transparency centres in Europe and one Asia-Pacific, and that the company is open to setting up another one if there is demand for it.

According to Stephan Neumeier, managing director of the Asia-Pacific region, Kaspersky may consider India as one of its destinations for a Transparency Centre. “In the near future, India is definitely in the planning, just not at this point of time,” he added.―Livemint