Eugene Kaspersky speaks candidly about the state of security

Speaking to media this week to announce the opening of Kaspersky Lab’s first Australian office, company CEO Eugene Kaspersky talked up the strength and sophistication of today’s cybercriminals.

“The reality is criminals are here and there is nothing to stop them. These guys are very professional and are very motivated.

“It’s an organised industry. It’s not like the Mafia [instead] it’s like a traditional business which is organised by commercial interests.

According to Kaspersky, the result is a very high load of malware. This year so far Kaspersky Lab has collected 20 million different malicious malware samples.

Last year the company collected about 2 million samples all up. And that was slightly more than all the malware collected from the company’s launch in 1997 to 2006.

Furthermore, he estimated that US$100 billion a year is stolen from bank accounts around the globe and revealed industry giants are in panic.

“They can’t control the situation anymore. No one agrees with the existing situation, there are too many cybercriminals and they’re coming with very sophisticated attacks.

“In some time the internet will not be strong enough to store all the malware, one day these lines will get flooded,” he said.

This year, cyber-terrorism and cyber-warfare has increasingly made the headlines, with Russians allegedly attacking Estonians and Georgians
or attacks on pro-Tibetan group websites. This will become more common in the near future, warned Kaspersky.

“I’m afraid that soon there will be incidents which will be called cyber-terrorism affecting the critical infrastructure via IT [platforms].

“I’m really scared because we depend on them,” he said.

Meanwhile, as the industry has evolved, Kaspersky revealed that his company has introduced a new term to describe the security industry.

“It’s no longer the anti-virus industry or the anti-malware industry,” he said. “It’s the anti-spam industry, as well as the anti-malware industry, it’s everything. We just protect against threats.”

In essence, he said, it’s the ITTP industry: the Information Technology Threat Protection Industry.

Redefining the name of the industry is all part of what Kaspersky believes is the result of a business sector that is undergoing a major revolution.

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