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Hello, dear readers of Valery Kharlamov’s blog! Continuing the cycle of biographies of famous and successful people, today I want to tell you about an outstanding personality, a threat of criminals in cyberspace, namely, who Evgeny Valentinovich Kaspersky is.
Biography
Childhood and early career
The biography of the future brilliant programmer began in October 1965. He was the only child in the family of an engineer and archival worker in Novorossiysk. Mom from childhood drew attention to his interest in numbers, so she tried to develop him in this direction, periodically buying math textbooks. The tasks were solved with ease, so when entering the school, no one even thought about which one to choose.
After studying a little at a physics and mathematics school, the family moved to the Moscow region and Evgeny graduated from a boarding school with a technical bias at MGI, after which he entered the Institute of Cryptography, Communications and Informatics at the KGB Military Academy. In 1987 he successfully graduated and decided to go into military affairs. Because at that time he already had a wife and two children, and there were no prospects for a mathematician by profession. In order to be able to feed his family, he went to work at a research institute under the USSR Ministry of Defense.
Creating an antivirus
In 1989, Eugene tried to figure out what had happened to his computer, and found that a virus “wound up” in it, which at that time only initiates, in principle, like him, could know about. Kaspersky cleaned his machine by creating a utility, and saved the virus itself on a floppy disk just in case, curiosity got the better of him, he was very interested to know what it consists of and how it works in general. It was the Cascade 1704 virus. As Evgeny himself later admitted, it was on that evening that he realized what his purpose was and what he wanted to do all his life.
For some time he helped fellow officers «heal» their computers, until one day one of them brought a new interesting «parasite», asking him to write a program that would help get rid of it. This is how, gradually, step by step, the programmer becomes an employee of the KAMI Information Technology Center. And all thanks to the fact that instead of going out to restaurants for royalties, he wrote a book on how to protect your computer.
The book did not bring any profit, even ruined it, as it did not compensate for the costs. But the genius was noticed, they began to appreciate and invite to specialized conferences. And frequent trips did not at all combine with his service, from which he had to quit and take the risk of getting a job at KAMI, which at that time did not even have a department responsible for combating cybercrime. And the most surprising thing is that for a long time he was listed as the only employee of this department, day and night giving himself up to work.
Kaspersky worked for 12 hours, resting only a couple of times a month. On the way to your goal, you should sweat and make efforts in order to get what you want later, and Eugene understood this very well, besides, this area really fascinated him. Three years were difficult, but also decisive. While the programs developed for the company were very rare and difficult to sell, he decided to create a few more so that there would be at least some profit. And his efforts were crowned with success.
First international win
In 1994, his offspring, called AVP, won the antivirus competition in Germany, as it managed to detect the maximum number of «parasites» that competitors did not notice, and, for you to understand, at that time there were already famous antivirus programs McAfee and Norton Antivirus. Remember them on your first computers? And, despite the fact that they successfully made their way into the market, Kaspersky won the competition.
After this incident, Evgeny Valentinovich finally began to understand that his workaholism and sacrifices of personal time paid off, and even more than that. Two years later, he signed a contract with the 1C program familiar to many, this deal only strengthened his position and reputation. At the same time, having no special entrepreneurial experience and failing to foresee the difficulties, our hero made a mistake that became an invaluable experience for him, namely, that the rights to his program that won the competition were extended only to Russia.
Laboratory and going global
Western «geniuses» and intelligent programmers instantly made similar duplicates. And the worst thing is that it was impossible to sue them and bring them to justice. This gave Evgeny excitement and courage, and, having worked at KAMI for 6 years, he went on a free voyage in 1997, creating his own company, which he called Kaspersky Lab. Only now he planned to call it simply «Laboratory», without a surname, so as not to seem narcissistic. His wife persuaded him, insisting on adding the second part and becoming a co-founder.
It’s time to disappear for days at work again and give all the best. In the same year, SecureList enters the world, conceived as an encyclopedia about viruses and bugs. By the way, this Internet portal is active and popular to this day, periodically receiving updates. In 2000, they managed to rename their winner AVP into the well-known brand «Kaspersky Anti-Virus». In 2005, the efforts paid off again — the number of users grew rapidly, bringing him worldwide fame. In 2007, he became CEO, as until that time he controlled research processes, and his wife held the leadership position.
In 2009, he was awarded the State Prize of the Russian Federation in the field of science and technology, and also became a member of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation by decree of Dmitry Medvedev, who at that time held the post of President of the Russian Federation. In 2012, he was ranked 8th among the most dangerous people in the world. Because he was able to detect American cyberspies who planned to control the Middle East by launching a virus called Flame. He, for example, getting into the computers of government agencies, could turn on cameras and record what was happening in the room, transmitting data to hackers. Or turn on bluetooth and synchronize with other devices, downloading all the information, take screenshots of the screen every 15 seconds, and so on.
To date, his corporation has captured more than 200 countries of the world, protecting users’ computers from cyber attacks. And the very state of the programmer for 2016 amounted to approximately 1,1 billion dollars, according to Forbes magazine.
Personal life
Eugene twice sealed himself by marriage. His first wife, Natalya, who kept him company in opening and running his own business, bore him two children, Maxim and Ivan. Maxim decided to graduate from the Faculty of Geography of Moscow State University, but Vanya followed in his father’s footsteps — mastering cybernetics and computational mathematics. Although at the moment they are divorced from Natalia, they managed to maintain friendly relations. What can I say, until 2012 she continued to be his business partner, although in 1998 they decided to live separately.
The cybercrime fighter himself believes that if people disperse, they should do everything to maintain closeness and warmth. And he succeeded, at least with Natalya, despite the fact that they already have other families. By the way, the identity of the new wife is carefully hidden, it is only known that they met each other at a ski resort.
Fame sometimes brings trouble, in addition to wealth and recognition. So, in 2011, wanting to get hold of, the attackers kidnapped his youngest son Ivan. They seized him near a Moscow metro station, not far from his mother’s office where he worked. Closed in the bathhouse under the supervision of a security guard and demanded a ransom of 3 million euros. The boy had to spend 5 days in captivity, withstanding fear and horror, until law enforcement officers released him. As the attackers later admitted, they were looking for a victim on the Internet, and accidentally stumbled upon Vanya’s profile on the Vkontakte social network, where his home and work addresses were indicated.
Character
The fact that our hero is a workaholic, you already understood, he considers his work not just a favorite thing, but even treats it as a hobby. Today he is a multimillionaire, but at the same time remains a simple person, not boasting of his publicity and wealth. Which, by the way, donates to charity.
If you remember, in an article about methods for attracting success, we told you that almost all rich people do charity work, and even the rich, even without a bed, some future millionaires gave their piece of bread to the more suffering. The universe then returns the good. So Eugene, apparently, has comprehended this science, he even tries to reward his employees in every case in order to increase their motivation.
He loves active sports, in particular, kayaking, skiing, conquering mountain peaks and Formula 1 racing. He shares information about his travels on the pages of his fan club, as well as in LiveJournal.
Having been ill at first with star disease, today the storm of cybercriminals does not worry about materiality at all. For example, he loves cars, but at the same time claims that he doesn’t care how it looks and what class, as long as it drives and doesn’t break down, preferring to be behind the wheel rather than hire drivers. And he didn’t work out with shopping, once a year his wife manages to pick up the necessary things on her own, bring him for fitting and quickly take away the unnecessary ones.
Internet security concept
After the kidnapping of his son, Eugene realized that the availability of resources was a threat, and that it was necessary to control the Internet space at the state level. Therefore, he proposes a very interesting concept of differentiating users on the Internet by coming up with three zones.
The first, red, implies a serious identification of each user. It is carried out with the help of Internet passports, the same official documents as regular passports. This will allow you to conduct various voting and elections online, receive government services and manage your accounts.
The yellow zone implies the presence of persons under the age of 18 in order to avoid intrusive advertising and other information from which it is worth restricting children. Passports are not needed there, just authorization so that parents can control the resources they visit.
And the last one, the green zone, does not even require authorization, so that each person has access to news, social networks and other information resources.
Conclusion
And that’s all for today, dear readers! I also recommend that you read the article «The History of the Richest President of the United States — Donald Trump.» Good luck and inspiration to your accomplishments!