Kaspersky: World under increasing cyber-terrorism risk

PanARMENIAN.Net - VivaCell-MTS hosted Monday, November 16, Eugene Kaspersky, Chairman and CEO of Kaspersky Lab, who became the sixth laureate of Armenian President's Award for Outstanding Contribution to Global IT.

Kaspersky visited VivaCell-MTS headquarters to participate in a joint press conference with VivaCell-MTS General Manager Ralph Yirikian, and Chairman of the GIT Award Committee Hovik Musaelyan.

Following the press conference, Eugene Kaspersky delivered a presentation titled “The Internet of Threats” for the ICT community representatives, focusing on current and future tendencies of cyber attacks. According to the IT security guru, there are three main groups of threats in the IT sector: cybercrime, the growing complex risks of cyber-espionage, and the threat of cyberweapons use against critical infrastructure.

According to him, with the growing dependence on digital equipment and machinery, the world is becoming increasingly exposed to the risk of cyber-terrorism. Kaspersky also offered his vision on what should be done to make the use of the Internet and digital equipment significantly safer and more secure.

Commenting on his award, Kaspersky said: “I’m most grateful for the Award. It’s a great honor for me to join the line-up of outstanding tech-gurus chosen in previous years to be laureates of the GIT Award. We’ve been working in Armenia for quite a long time now, paying particular attention to educational projects for students and IT specialists. It’s fantastic to see the information technology sector get support at the governmental level, with the IT industry becoming increasingly important in terms of both social and economic development.”

“In today’s world, where the countries' strength is determined by technological superiority and economic strength, ICT is considered to be a key factor in our country’s economic growth,” Yirikian said. “Our country has a huge potential for national achievements in the high technologies sector, and for the economic growth as its ultimate outcome. Therefore, we should support such important national projects encouraging further development of this sector.”

The award is an opportunity to encourage development of information technologies in Armenia and is very important in terms of positioning Armenia on the world map as a country with a potential for higher achievements in the high-tech sector. VivaCell-MTS is confident of the Armenian youth’s potential of self-development. The GIT award aims to attract young Armenians’ attention to the IT sector. The Company spares no effort to promote Armenia’s progress in the information technologies sector.

VivaCell-MTS has been the sponsor of the initiative for six years. The Company has donated AMD 125 million for realization of the program.

Kaspersky, the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Kaspersky Lab is a world-renowned cybersecurity expert and a successful entrepreneur.

He began his career in cybersecurity accidentally when his computer became infected with the “Cascade” virus in 1989. Eugene’s specialized education in cryptography helped him analyze the encrypted virus, understand its behavior and develop a removal tool for it. After successfully removing the virus, Eugene’s curiosity and passion for computer technology drove him to start analyzing more malicious programs and developing disinfection modules for them. This exotic collection of anti-virus modules would eventually become the foundation for Kaspersky Lab’s antivirus database. Today the database is one of the most comprehensive collections in cybersecurity, detecting and preventing systems from being infected by more than 100 million malicious programs.