Yevgeny Valentinovich Kaspersky (Russian: Евгений Валентинович Касперский; born 4 October 1965) is a Russian cybersecurity expert and the CEO of Kaspersky Lab, an IT security company with 4,000 employees.
Kaspersky was born on 4 October 1965 in Novorossiysk, Soviet Union.
He grew up near Moscow, where he moved at age nine.
His father was an engineer and his mother a historical archivist.
As a child he developed an early interest in math and technology.
He spent his free time reading math books and won second place in a math competition at age 14.
When he was fourteen, Kaspersky began attending A.N. Kolmogorov boarding school, which is run by Moscow University and specializes in math.
He was also a member of the youth division of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
At the age of 16, Kaspersky entered a five-year program with The Technical Faculty of the KGB Higher School, which prepared intelligence officers for the Russian military and KGB.
1987
Kaspersky graduated from The Technical Faculty of the KGB Higher School in 1987 with a degree in mathematical engineering and computer technology.
He graduated in 1987 with a degree in mathematical engineering and computer technology.
After graduating college, Kaspersky served the Soviet military intelligence service as a software engineer.
He met his first wife Natalya Kaspersky at Severskoye, a KGB vacation resort, in 1987.
1989
His interest in IT security began when his work computer was infected with the Cascade virus in 1989 and he developed a program to remove it.
Kaspersky helped grow Kaspersky Lab through security research and salesmanship.
Kaspersky's interest in IT security began in 1989, when his PC was infected by the Cascade virus, while working for the Ministry of Defence.
He studied how the virus worked and developed a program to remove it.
Afterwards he continually found new viruses and developed software to remove them, as a hobby.
Early on Kaspersky's anti-virus software had just 40 virus definitions and was distributed mostly to friends.
1990
Kaspersky's company grew quickly in the late 1990s.
1991
In 1991, Kaspersky was granted an early release from his military service and left the defense ministry to take a job at the Information Technology Center of a private company KAMI, in order to work on his antivirus product full-time.
1992
There, he and his colleagues improved the software and released it as a product called Antiviral Toolkit Pro in 1992.
At first the software was purchased by about ten clients per month.
It earned about $100 per month, mostly from companies in Ukraine and Russia.
Kaspersky's then-future wife Natalya Kaspersky became his coworker at KAMI.
1994
In 1994, Hamburg University in Germany gave Kaspersky's software first place in a competitive analysis of antivirus software.
This led to more business for Kaspersky from European and American companies.
Kaspersky Lab was founded three years later by Kaspersky, his wife and Kaspersky's friend Alexey De-Monderik.
Natalya, who pushed Eugene to start the company, was the CEO, while Eugene was the head of research.
The following year, the CIH virus (AKA the Chernobyl virus) created a boon for Kaspersky's anti-virus products, which Kaspersky said was the only software at the time that could cleanse the virus.
According to Wired, "their software was advanced for the time."
For example, it was the first software to monitor viruses in an isolated quarantine.
1997
He co-founded Kaspersky Lab in 1997 and helped identify instances of government-sponsored cyberwarfare as the head of research.
He has been an advocate for an international treaty prohibiting cyberwarfare.
1998
From 1998 to 2000, its annual revenue grew 280 percent and by 2000 almost sixty percent of revenues were international.
2000
By 2000, it had a staff of 65 people, starting from 13 in 1997.
The antivirus product was renamed to Kaspersky Antivirus in 2000, after an American company started using the product's original name, which wasn't trademarked.
As the head of research, Kaspersky authored papers on viruses and went to conferences to promote the software.
He was often quoted in the technology press as an antivirus expert.
2007
He became the CEO in 2007 and remains so as of 2023.
