Jackie Chan’s favorite Wild East security software firm, Kaspersky Lab, will unveil its latest cybercrime fighting weapon in New York next week. The company’s Moscow-based CEO, the charismatic Eugene Kaspersky, will be on hand to launch a new consumer malware product portfolio.
The latest products will be based on the Kaspersky End Point Security software platform.
Earlier this month, I met with Kaspersky Lab COO Eugene Buyakin at the Mandarin Oriental hotel on Boylston Street in Boston. He said the company’s sales strategy is the same from Berlin to Seattle. “We want to increase our share of the consumer market anda build our brand awareness,” he said. “We want to build our business to business market.”
Kaspersky’s last product launch was in Germany in June, where Kaspersky generates most of its $540 million in revenue. Buyakin said he expects worldwide sales of the upstart brand to grow by 20% in 2011. The company was started by Kaspersky and his wife Natalia back in 1997. While the brains of the operation are all Russians, Russia accounts for just 10% of the company’s revenue. Kaspersky Lab has around 850 software engineers in Moscow fighting DigiNators and Stuxnets and other intangibles in cyberspace.
“Our market is mostly Europe and so we consider ourselves a European company,” Buyakin said. “Our main competitor is Symantec and in Russia we also have the local names like Dr. Web. No matter where you go there is going to be freeware or smaller local start-ups that can compete with you on price. In China we are basically out of the market because of freeware.”
