Eugene Kaspersky

Yevgeny Valentinovich Kaspersky (Russian: Евгений Валентинович Касперский; born 4 October 1965) is a Russian cybersecurity expert who is the co-founder and the CEO of Kaspersky Lab, an IT security company with 4,000 employees. He was a cryptologist and officer in the Soviet army until leaving the service in 1991. 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. Kaspersky graduated from The Technical Faculty (cryptology) of the KGB Higher School in 1987 with a degree in mathematical engineering and computer technology. 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. He became the CEO in 2007 and remains so as of 2024.