Kaspersky Lab, the Moscow-based Internet security software developer, made the list of corporations sanctioned by the presidential administration amid Russia's war against Ukraine.
Although Kaspersky cannot sell its products to state-run organizations, the company is still promoting its globally recognized brand in Ukraine.
At the Cybersecurity Forum Ukraine, held by Kaspersky Lab in Kyiv’s Opera Hotel on Oct. 6-7, company officials refused to comment how much they predict sanctions will affect their sales volumes in Ukrainian.
The company has been selling high-quality cyber-security software in more than 200 countries since 1997.
Kaspersky Lab in 2014 accounted for about 50 percent of the Ukrainian antivirus software market, according to International Data Corporation. This year due to sanctions, the firm’s market share might shrink by around 14 percent, according to Oleksandr Savushkin, head of Kaspersky in Northern-Eastern Europe.
“I am proud, though, that people divide politics and business,” Savushkin said.
Kaspersky expects companies in the private sector to continue buying its antivirus software to continue protecting commercial data from the expanding range of cyber crimes to which Ukraine is prone. Almost 4 million cyber attacks infect computers worldwide on a daily basis and 10 percent of those target entities, not exclusively individuals.
In January-September of this year Ukraine has become the third most-prone country in the world at risk of web-based infection, according to data provided by Kaspersky. More than a third of the population encountered web-based malware through this period.
Ukrainians are also at risk of mobile malware infections, Kaspersky research found. In the second quarter of 2015, around 4 million people encountered malware on their mobile devices. “Most people today protect their computers only and don’t think about protecting phones. They underestimate these threats,” said David Em, the senior technology consultant at Kaspersky.
Ukrainian Internet users are mostly prone to malware because they use pirated or outdated software, Em said. Around 17 percent of Ukrainian Internet users that get affected by cyber threats still use an outdated operating system.
In order to attract users to use websites that infect their computers with malware, many cyber hackers speculate on spreading information that relates to the escalating political conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Many computers get infected through spam emails and messages on social networks.
Jaap van Oss, team leader of the cyber crime group at Europol, said that changes on the legislative level cannot help mitigate the cyber attack threats that Ukrainian businesses face.
“If we look at crypto lockers (a special type of malware that locks all data on the computer in return for a financial award), they mostly target small and medium enterprises. If data is locked, the business stops running,” Oss explained.
Ukraine also generated 2 percent of all web attacks in the world in the second quarter of 2015. Russia remains the top producer of malware globally, having generated more than the half of global web attacks.
“Malware producers want to get better every day to invade us. Until just 2011 the volume of cyber attacks was very low, but after 2011, they started attacking small and medium enterprises on a bigger scale, stealing contact and banking information,” said Em.
Kyiv Post staff writer Bozhena Sheremeta can be reached at [email protected]. The Kyiv Post’s IT coverage is sponsored by AVentures Capital, Looksery, and SoftServe.
