In 1989, the Russian-born Eugene Kaspersky found his PC infected by "Cascade", a computer virus that was spreading widely during that time.
If you are old enough, you will remember that in those days we were still using the character-based DOS as our operating system. This particular virus made the characters on the screen fall down like dead leaves tumbling to the ground.
It was Eugene's first encounter with the computer viruses. He used an antivirus utility to delete the virus. He also saved a copy of the infected files. He later analyzed it and figured out how the computer viruses worked and then created an antidote for it. Subsequently, his friends came to him with different computer viruses and he developed the cures for each of them.
That was how it began, and I guess Eugene Kaspersky is one of the luckiest people in the world in that he has been able to successfully turn his hobby into a flourishing business. In 1991, he worked on the Anti Virus Project (AVP). In 1997, he co-founded Kaspersky Lab. In 2007, he became the CEO and today the company is gaining a reputation as a major information security solutions provider - along with big names such as McAfee, Norton and TrendMicro. In our email interview, Eugene claimed that "some of the core technologies used in the global antivirus industry today were developed by our company".
For users of the newer version of the Windows operating system, Microsoft has provided Microsoft Defender and Windows Live OneCare. These seem to be a very secure defense against attacks. They also seem to put a death knell on independent antivirus providers. However, Eugene believes that one has "to focus on antivirus technologies to develop a truly effective antivirus solution". I agree with him, especially because the techniques used by virus makers get more and more sophisticated by the hour. The creativity of the antivirus makers makes it also impossible to embed the antivirus protection in hardware.
Headquartered in Moscow, Kaspersky now has labs in a number of countries around the world, including five European countries, China, Korea, Japan and the United States. Since last year, it has also been increasingly present in Indonesia.
In fact, last week Kaspersky launched its e-store, which allowed computer users in Indonesia, Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries to purchase their antivirus and Internet security products using local currencies. Based in Malaysia, the e-store, which was called Antivirus365.net, offers products such as Kaspersky Internet Security, Kaspersky Anti-Virus, Kaspersky Mobile Security and Kaspersky Small Office Security (KSOS). The last one is specifically targeted at the SMB market. Using the services found on Kaspersky's web, we can also scan our computer free of charge or download a 30-day trial version.
One of the complaints that we often lodge against antivirus makers is the unavailability of quick response. Antivirus365.net tries to address this issue by providing forum.antivirus365.net. We can chat with the technical support staff or get help from the users community. At the moment the forum is still in its early infancy, and so far it has hardly any useful information to offer. Over time, I hope it will improve and become truly useful.
Viruses, Trojans, worms, spam, hacks, adware, etc. are a fact of life in the digital world. They will attack our enterprise servers, our PCs and notebooks, our cellphones and soon perhaps our cars.
Even Kaspersky's own servers in the United States were recently hacked. The company quickly assured the public that no customer data was stolen and that they had fixed the vulnerability problem.
Nothing can give us 100 percent protection against what has become known as malware, however. The best that we can do to protect our computers and servers is to install effective antivirus software, keep its virus data updated and adopt computing best practice.
When it comes to virus definition data, Kaspersky is known as one of the fastest to respond to the latest virus outbreak, and that is why it is gaining ground among home and small office users.
Which countries are the most productive in churning out viruses? According to Eugene, the three most active "virus-writing" regions are China, Latin America (Brazil in particular) and Russian-speaking countries. Indonesia is also suspected to produce a lot of viruses with devastating impacts, and a good example is the infamous brontok virus. "You have to remember that there are criminals everywhere, and cybercriminals are not an exception," Eugene reminded us.
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