Nota Bene

Magadan to Lake Baikal via Yakutsk by road. Oh yes…

But we’ve got to get to Magadan first!

So it was a final gaze out the window at the office – luckily during a sunset ->

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And then it was the short drive to SVO, and from there the long flight to Magadan – eight time-zones to the east!…

Curiously, there’s now a Magadan restaurant in Sheremetyevo:

And several hours later we were dining at another Magadan restaurant – in Magadan! ->

But, what were we doing in Magadan in Magadan in the first place?…

Read on…

My first international business trip of the year was as modest as it could get – with just a single port of call. But that port of call was sunny Riyadh, which sure made a welcome change to the sub-zero temperatures and daily snow that’s been falling in Moscow since November!…

I’d been to the city before – in 2013 and 2014 – and both times for conferences, speeches and meetings, and with hardly any micro-tourisms. This year – zero micro-tourisms; not even a nano-tourism. As per – the business schedule was a full and busy one, including matters connected with the imminent opening of our local office here (which I’ll get to in another post). Alas, it was so busy… – zero nice photos too. Apologies folks. My excuse? You’ve got to work hard!

What I remember most from my two first trips to Saudi was that practically all the folks I’d meet would say the same thing: without a serious transformation in the country there’s no future for it in the modern world. To be honest, back then I was a little amazed by the boldness of such statements, but now I see that wasn’t just talk. Changes have been made, and though they’re not big changes, they are noticeable. First of all, public transportation is being built! Earlier there was no such thing: Riyadh was strictly car-only. Today there are overhead transportation lines. No trains yet, but things are looking good ->

Read on…

Indeed time to hit the road, or, rather – the skies…

I’ll get to the where and why I’m hitting the skies in a bit. For now – prelude: snowy airport.

Once seated, out of the corner of my eye through my window I noticed a particular airline’s insignia on a plane’s tail fin:

And here it is zoomed in:

When I started dancing a jig in the aisle I was quickly asked to sit back down by the flight attendant. But why was I jigging? Simple: that there emblem is Qatar Airways’. So what? Well, in the past, its planes would operate only out of Domodedovo Airport to the south of Moscow. But here we were at our ‘local’ airport – the hub that goes by the name of Sheremetyevo, which is just a short drive from the office. Domodedovo takes an hour or two longer to get to. Qatar has, clearly, started flying out of SVO too. Hurray. Jig!

So where were we headed this time? Check out the following pic for clues ->

Read on…

Hi boys and girls!

It’s been a while since my last installment of iNews, aka – uh-oh cyber-news, aka – cyber-tales from the dark side, so here’s reviving the series to get back on track in giving you highlights of jaw-dropping cyber-astonishments you might not hear about from your usual sources of news…

In this installment – just one iNews item for you, but it’s plenty: an added item might have watered down the significance of this one (hardly appropriate when there’s ‘watershed’ in the title:)…

Briefly about the iNews: after lengthy legal proceedings in the U.S., a court has ruled in favor of big-pharma company Merck against its insurer for a payout of US$1.4 billion (!!) to cover the damages Merck suffered at the grubby hands of NotPetya (aka ExPetr or simply Petya) in 2017.

Quick rewind back to 2017…

In June of that year, all of a sudden a viciously nasty and technologically advanced encryptor worm – NotPetya – appeared and spread like wildfire. It initially targeted Ukraine, where it attacked victims via popular accounting software – affecting banks, government sites, Kharkov Airport, the monitoring systems of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (!!!), and so on and so on. Next, the epidemic spread to Russia, and after that – all around the world. Many authoritative sources reckon NotPetya was the most destructive cyberattack ever. Which looks about right when you count the number of attacked companies (dozens of which each lost hundreds of millions of dollars), while overall damage to the world economy was estimated at a minimum 10 billion dollars!

One of the most notable victims of the global cyberattack was the U.S. pharmaceuticals giant Merck. It was reported 15,000 of its computers were zapped within 90 seconds (!) of the start of the infection, while its backup data-center (which was connected to the main network), was lost almost instantly too. By the end of the attack Merck had lost some 30,000 workstations and 7,500 servers. Months went into clearing up after the attack – at a cost of ~1.4 billion dollars, as mentioned. Merck even had to borrow vaccines from outside sources for a sum of $250 million due to the interruptions caused to its manufacturing operations.

Ok, background out the way. Now for the juiciest bit…

Read on…

The new working year is up and away, cruising steadily and assuredly like… a long-range airliner flying east. Out the window it’s getting brighter: in Moscow daylight has increased by nearly an hour daily since a month ago; in New York – by 40 minutes; and in Reykjavik – by more than two hours. Even in Singapore there’s… one more minute of sunlight in a day compared to a month ago.

However, the year 2021 simply won’t let go! First there was my review of the year (all positive); then there was the 2021 K-patents review (all positive). There’ll be a corporate/financial-results review a bit later (all positive:). And now, here, today – I’ve another review for you!…

Several reviews of a single year? If some of you have had enough of 2021 and want to leave it behind, forget it, and get on with this year, this one’s for you! ->

Actually, you can download the calendar the above pic’s taken from – here (and, jic, what the above pic’s about is here:).

Right, back to that fourth 2021-review…

And it just so happens to be – a professional review, as in: of the product and technological breakthroughs we made throughout our very busy 2021 – and all in the name of protecting you from cyber-evil. But first – some product/tech history…

Read on…

Hi folks!

I simply must share this good, no – wonderful – news: we took out the most patents by any Russian-origin company in the U.S.A. in 2021! And we were a real trend-bucker, for in 2021 there was a fall of 7.5% in the number of patents registered in the country.

“In the annual patent ranking analysis published by IFI Claims Direct, Kaspersky has been named the top Russian company patented in the US with 43 patents published in 2021. Throughout its history the company has received 412 patents in the U.S. alone, with more than 1200 patents around the world, including Russia, the EU, China and Japan.”

// Btw: despite the overall fall in the number of patents issued last year, those issued for machine learning and quantum computing rose. This is just as quick reminder, in case you weren’t aware, of where this modern world is heading ).

A big thanks from me to all the team in our IP department. Always working hard, working smart, and working successfully (remember the victories over patent trolls, and the antitrust wins against Microsoft and Apple?). And a big thanks too to our developers who came up with our world-beating technologies in the first place – and that’s no mindless marketing hyperbole: our tech wins in independent tests more than any other. Oh da!

This super news about our patents got me thinking… Why don’t we take a closer look at our 2021 patent successes – not just the how many, but also the which, where, how and when? Yes, why not? After all, my patent-blogposts in the past have been popular. It’ll also be a nice complement to my 2021 review…

All righty. Here we go!…

In 2021 we obtained 137 patents and applied for a further 76. This brings our totals to 1240 patents and 392 applications. Here are those figures added to our historical patent graph:

Read on…

Our Threat Intelligence service (further – TI) is a set of important services that help orientate businesses in the anything-but-straightforward cyberthreat landscape and take the right decisions for enhancing their cybersecurity. In a nutshell, it’s all about the collection and analysis of data about the epidemiological situation within and outside a corporate network, professional tools for investigating incidents, analytical reports about new targeted cyberattacks, and much more besides. And it’s what every developer of corporate systems of cybersecurity has – or should have – in their product-ecosystem; it’s like a trump card or panic button, without which the ecosystem is like… a chair with weak, creaking legs. At any moment you can be in for a fall – a very painful one.

With TI, a cybersecurity expert can keep an all-seeing eye on the surroundings around their cyber-fortress (and even see over the horizon). He or she is able to keep track of what the enemy is up to – where they’re coming and going, how well they’re armed, what’s in their minds, and what strategies, tactics and intelligence they use. Without TI, even with the best defensive weaponry and bomb-proof walls, the fortress is still vulnerable: the enemy won’t necessarily come through the main gate; it could tunnel its way in or go for an aerial attack. Not good Disaster.

// Commercial-break button – ON:

We at K started to develop our own TI portal back in 2016. Since then it’s come on leaps and bounds – so much so that last year the analytical agency Forrester recognized us as a world leader in the market. And many big names around the world agree with Forrester, having become users of our TI services long ago: for example Telefonica, Munich Airport, Chronicle Security, and CyberGuard Technologies.

// Commercial-break button – OFF.

Perhaps the jewel in our TI-crown is the Digital Footprint Intelligence service (further – DFI)…

Read on…

Happy New Year folks!

Sure, we’re already half-way through January 2022, but, as I think now most of you already know, the first week of the first month of every year is a week-off for everyone in Russia (apart from the unlucky few who keep the country, its roads, its supermarkets, etc., etc. running). Brief excuse regarding explanation of my seeming tardiness out the way, let me swiftly move on to another annual year-end/beginning tradition of mine: my review of the previous year!

Briefly, 2021 was… a busy and dynamic year (and in many different ways) for us as a Kompany, and no less busy and dynamic for me personally (no change there, then). And all things covid didn’t hold us back in any way – hurray! Wow – that was brief. More brevity – of a visual kind: simply three super pics taken in 2021 to lift your mood this winter’s day ) ->

Pole of Cold, Siberia:

Volcanism, Kamchatka:

And a tropical Christmas tree, Maldives:

Read on…

After checking out the very orange Koshelev volcano, next up simply has to be milky-white waterfalls – a truly unique phenomenon.

I mean, the water in these falls isn’t just seemingly white, much like waves coming in off the ocean (all the bubbles/froth). This water is actually really white – like milk! How so? Well, due to the local volcanism there’s an unusually high concentration of aluminum (and other similar natural elements) in the water here, not only making the water milky, but also leaving deposits of whiteness on the bedrock underneath and along the waterways. The milky water also seals up the walls of underground natural streams, forming tubes – along which water flows. Pressure builds, and eventually it is shot out of the ground like a fountain:

Read on…

One fine (shock, horror!) August morning in Southern Kamchatka last year, we awoke at the foot of the wonderful Koshelev volcano (shocking awesomeness). Then we heard the nearby – aluminum laden – streams a-trickling (shocking, but true). Yes, there was so much shock to our collective systems we did all nearly faint, but we pulled through, fully conscious – just…).

Read on…