TL; DR: In the ever-changing landscape of online threats, it’s imperative internet security companies evolve alongside the attacks targeting consumers and businesses. For two decades, that’s been Kaspersky Lab’s North Star, and 2017 marks the company’s 20th year of making the web a safer place for everyone. The leading security vendor’s two-pronged approach offers a unique blend of powerful protection solutions delivered to a network of 400 million users and deep threat intelligence to prevent and mitigate assailments. Kaspersky offers security for businesses and individuals on a global scale, and its home-grown technologies are giving partners peace of mind in knowing their online environments are protected.
Founded in 1946, Axel Springer has grown into one of the largest media outlets in Europe. Today, the company boasts offices in more than 40 countries and more than 37,000 employees. Axel Springer is big and so is its IT infrastructure.
With so much data delivered to clients over multiple locations, Axel Springer found the legacy security technology it was employing was no longer capable of protecting its client and proprietary information from the evolving threats of the contemporary online landscape. So the company turned to Kaspersky Lab for a solution.
“When we began looking for an alternative, our key concerns were user friendliness for our end users and performance and success rates for virus detection and removal,” said Harald Monihart, Client DevOps Team Leader at Axel Springer SE.
And Axel Springer found this in the Kaspersky Security Center. In just six weeks, the company rolled out the solution to 4,500 employees without interrupting workflows. The result was improved access to current databases, fewer performance disruptions, and more enhanced overall security.
It wasn’t just the technology Axel Springer benefited from, however. Kaspersky’s team worked with the company’s IT department and end users every step of the way to educate them on both how to implement the solution and best practices on threat detection and mitigation.
“Our solutions are twofold,” said Michael Canavan, Kaspersky’s SVP of B2B sales. “One’s the education side to really help prevent social engineering and recognize attacks that might be hitting organizations, and the other’s on the technical side with the Kaspersky Security Network (KSN), which really gives us that automated, quick response capability to protect our customers better.”
2017 marks Kaspersky’s 20th anniversary, and the company shows no signs of slowing its efforts to protect enterprise-level businesses, SMBs, and consumers from today’s online dangers. Through layered security solutions tied to a network of more than 400 million users and training programs teaching organizations how to keep their environments safe, Kaspersky continues to provide peace of mind for its partners around the world.
Celebrating a 20-Year Mission to Safeguard What People Value Most
Michael told us there is great excitement surrounding Kaspersky’s 20th anniversary in 2017. The nature of the internet security industry, with new threats evolving on a daily basis, makes it difficult for some companies to keep pace. According to Michael, Kaspersky’s impressive track record and longevity stems from holding true to a culture of innovation and adherence to their mission.
“A lot of what inspired me to join the Kaspersky Lab team was the mission, which goes all the way to the top with Eugene Kaspersky,” Michael said. “Our aim is to save the world through a commitment to making the online space safer and to protect what matters most to people — whether that be data on a computer, pictures of their kids, or the operations of their business.”
Currently, Kaspersky operates with 3,000 employees working in 37 offices across 32 countries. It’s a large organization with a global focus. Part of the company’s core goal is to act and innovate with speed and agility, and that’s just what its size allows Kaspersky to do.
“We really pride ourselves on being innovative and developing the best possible solutions out there. One of the things you’ll find from a technical side is we aren’t looking to acquire and bolt on a bunch of solutions. We want to look at each security concern that comes up for our customers and determine the best methodology in the industry to address it.”
Security Solutions Tied to an Ecosystem of More Than 400 Million Users
Adaptation — it’s a theme echoed throughout the web security industry for good reason. Threats are in a constant state of flux, and companies, like Kaspersky, are charged with zeroing in on these dangers and developing effective responses to mitigate them.
One of the latest hazards to emerge are advanced persistent threats (APTs), where a network is breached by those with the malicious intent to steal data.
“For this, we’ve had to evolve from a typical endpoint security solution,” Michael said. “We’ve just launched a second iteration of the Kaspersky Anti Targeted Attack Platform, or KATA.”
Michael told us KATA is an enterprise-level solution built to detect these advanced threats at the network layer. The platform allows users to understand and correlate the information of all the telemetry within an organization to determine threat levels.
“That mirrors well with the second piece,” he said. “From a technology standpoint, we need to make sure we can handle as many of those threats as possible from the endpoint as well.”
Ransomware and APTs have become the central vulnerabilities organizations need to be shielded from, and Kaspersky’s predictive and reactive approach acts as the magic bullet. The predictive aspect looks at what threats are currently inhabiting the online space, analyzes them, and makes forecasts as to what they might evolve into. Michael told us if those predictions are a bit off line, Kaspersky asks how to best react to the threats to protect the environments.
“We do that in a couple of different ways,” he said. “One, at a critical level, we look at events in-depth with layered security approaches within organizations. KATA and endpoint security is a good example of this.”
Another example, Michael said, comes with Kapersky’s Endpoint Security for Business, where multiple layers of security are operating on a given system to protect it.
“Regardless of method of attack or vector it comes in,” he noted,” we’re protecting the core data on that endpoint to ensure that, if multiple methods are tried, we will block it.”
All Kaspersky’s products are tied into the Kaspersky Security Network, which is a vast ecosystem of 400 million people and 270,000 companies using its products. This allows Kaspersky to quickly identify new threats within the ecosystem and act quickly to remove them.
Evangelists Spreading the News of How to Mitigate Online Threats
Because so many are employing Kaspersky’s solutions, disseminating information to its customer base about the ways developing threats are targeting and getting into networks, and how to block them, is simplified. This is one reason why Kaspersky’s threat awareness training initiative is so effective in educating IT pros and end users on the dangers they face and how to prevent them.
“We have a web security awareness solution that’s geared toward not only IT professionals but also end users within organizations,” Michael said. “It focuses on making sure the regular, day-to-day users and your IT staff are aware of the latest security threats and how to recognize them as they enter the environment.”
Michael told us the attack vector with the highest success rate comes in the form of social engineering. Employees at a company are sometimes tricked into giving attackers access to data through emailed password requests or through a spoofed LinkedIn connection.
“Things like that are very commonplace, and all it takes is a little education,” Michael said. “That’s really where the security awareness training fits in. It’s educating the IT and user bases within organizations.”
According to Michael, getting the information out there is one of the most critical ways to prevent attacks, and it’s Kaspersky’s goal to automatically provide updated information about the changing threat landscape to its partners.
Home-Grown Technology Providing Peace of Mind for Partners
As Senior Vice President of B2B Sales in North America, Michael serves as a security evangelist for Kaspersky’s solutions. As with the rest of the Kaspersky team, Michael is committed to forming lasting relationships with partners and providing them with both top-tier security solutions and ongoing education and support.
“I want to make sure we’re not just interacting with our customers,” he said. “Instead, we want to form relationships with them as partners. It’s a good mutual agreement that ultimately ends up with partners having peace of mind because they know we have their backs.”
It’s because of this approach companies, like Axel Springer, have found Kaspersky to be so effective. Kaspersky’s mission of safeguarding environments through continuous innovation and keeping an ear to the ground works.
“In today’s changing threat climate, multifaceted approaches are necessary,” Michael said. “Responding to APTs and ransomware requires timely information and sophisticated home-grown technology adaptable to the changing landscape, and we’re answering this through innovation and a focus on education.”
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