Kaspersky commits to Russia
February will mark a year since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and this had brought both threats and opportunities to Russian IT companies, according to Kaspersky.
Speaking at the company’s ‘Cyber Security Weekend’ in Jordan recently, Eugene Kaspersky, co-founder and CEO of the cyber security firm, said it had been given a ‘gift’ by the Russian government because all IT firms now don’t have to pay corporate tax.
“The Russian government has recognised IT as one of the key, strategic industries, and gave us this deal. It’s paradise,” he said, adding that it would never move its HQ offshore.
He also said that there are more opportunities for Russian IT companies as they moved to fill the gap left by foreign firms that have pulled out of the country. There have been sweeping sanctions applied to Russia since the invasion, and the US in particular has targeted semiconductor development, and nanotechnology.
We have the same distance with the Russian government as we do with the rest of the world’s governments.
Eugene Kaspersky
Kaspersky said it is now harder to do business in North America and the EU, but that it was not closing its offices in those territories.
“The landscape has changed; in some parts of the world it got worse, but other parts are positive, and more positive than before, like in the Middle East, Africa, and many Asian countries. The Russian market is booming. We used to have more resources allocated to cloud technology, and less to endpoints, on-premises. But we’ve now changed this. The US and European markets are more cloud-oriented, but the rest of the world is not.
“About the allegations from the United States that we have close ties with Russian government; it’s bullshit,” he said.
We behave as an independent cyber security company and we try to be as far away from politics as possible.
Eugene Kaspersky
“We have the same distance with the Russian government as we do with the rest of the world’s governments. We advise many governments on cyber security, and many governments are our customers. We behave as an independent cyber security company and we try to be as far away from politics as possible.”
As to the US adding Kaspersky to its entity list in 2017 because it was deemed a threat to national security, he repeated: “It’s bullshit. There was no proof at all. Zero.”
Responding to a report that the company will be stopping sales of its VPN product, Kaspersky Secure Connection, in the Russian Federation, he said the company was following local regulations.
“In some countries, VPN is simply forbidden, so in those nations, we don’t have it. Any other option is illegal. We stay in the legal area.”
