It was somewhat sad saying goodbye to Singapore and its wonderful airport, but duty was calling so off we flew again…

So where next? Oh… that’s where! ->

Cairo – here we come!…

Read on…

Last week, the first ever GITEX Asia was held in Singapore – and I just had to be there…

Not that the original GITEX, which has been running since… 1980 (!) in Dubai every year, is disappearing or anything. It’s just that it’s getting all the more global – or should that be more local, given that Dubai is also in Asia. Confused? Don’t be! The more GITEXs the better is all you need to know!…

So what can I say about this newbie expo? Overall it was pretty modest: the venue wasn’t huge, and it featured only several dozen companies – a hundred tops. Not many big-name players, either. And in our field, it was basically just us:

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Hi folks!

…And for us it was hi St. Pete!

But, why does everyone always complain about how gloomy and rainy this city is? Every time I’m there – it’s all bright sunshine and blue skies! ->

We’re still in the thick of our hot season – packed with conferences, expos, meetings, and all kinds of other work-related stuff – plus a ton of travel around the globe. Early last week we wrapped up our global partner conference in Istanbul, while on Wednesday to Friday we had our Kaspersky Future Conference up in St. Petersburg for our major enterprise customers. It was a totally new format for us – we’d never done anything on such a scale before – but it worked out great: zero teething problems, or, as we say in Russia, the first pancake wasn’t a flop!

It all took place in downtown St. Pete, at the Astoria Hotel:

We brought together almost 250 folks from 130+ companies, and there were nearly 30 talks (less than half of which were ours – most came from the guests). I took to the stage too and shared my predictions about the future of cyber-nastiness. Sadly, the outlook’s grim…

But if you’re thorough in setting up the right processes and protocols, you can bring the risk of cyberattacks down to practically zero – and finally get a good night’s sleep :)

On top of that, we ran several workshops on incident investigation and other topics in our field:

During breaks, people mingled in the main area – something like this:

We also picked up some pretty colorful terms from the talks:

• Not just “threats” – but “black swans”
• “Ripe tomatoes”: we all want to be ripe tomatoes, not green ones
• Internal DDoS attack during an antivirus update :)
• Talking to IT is like making a deal with the devil // from the cybersecurity POV
• “Underbelly scanner” :)

It’s clear that information-security folks aren’t exactly popular, for we tend to get in the way of business-as-usual. Hence the rebranding of infosec departments: “Information Security Department”: ISD -> “Idiotic Sabotage Department”! Oh yes – very drole. But!… If you don’t do security (well), it’s only gonna be worse – way worse.

One nice little perk for me: since we’d brought a whole bunch of guests to both attend the conference at the Astoria and stay there too, the hotel management treated me to a luxury suite – (huge thanks to them!) ->

Honestly, I really don’t need such fancy digs, but if they’re offering – why not? And folks often ask me to show off some unique hotels and other lodgings. So here it is – this is what the Rachmaninoff Suite looks like:

Not bad, eh?

Luxurious!

The third room? Half-bar-half-library! ->

Views from the room:

To wrap things up – a shot from one of the restaurants hosting our evening bashes:

That’s it for St. Pete – time to head home! But it won’t be long till I’m back on the road once again!…

Salam, folks – from Saudi Arabia!

I was there last week at the Internet Governance Forum in Riyadh, where I was invited to give a speech about some of the lesser-known evils of the internet – and about our ideas regarding what to do to best tackle those evils. Traditionally, this annual forum has been attended by politicians and other government officials, representatives of international organizations, and so on. Only relatively recently have they started inviting folks from commercial companies – seemingly so as to get a better handle on the home truths about what’s really going on across the internet.

Since the event wasn’t dedicated to my core field (JIC: cybersecurity!), I didn’t stay around to listen to the other speeches. Thus, that’s all for today about the actual conference! However, I just have to tell you about the place where the event took place…

The forum took place in the enormous… palace (I can’t describe the building any other way) called the King Abdulaziz International Conference Center. And it seems it’s so luxuriously-exclusively grand and ritzy that there’s hardly anything about the place on the internet (e.g., no Wikipedia page) – yes, that same internet the governance of which the forum is dedicated to! Here’s how it looks from the outside:

Inside – breathtakingly beautiful opulence; here, for example, is the entrance hall:

The main hall:

Like? Then let’s take a closer look…

Read on…

Hai folks!

The official part of our SAS-2024 conference: done.

Now – the fun part: our esteemed delegates, respected speakers, honorable guests (and I!) continue to enjoy this picture-perfect corner of the island of Bali while they come to their senses – still digesting the mega-doses of first-class cybersecurity content they’ve just received…

As to my (direct) participation in the proceedings (besides watching the speeches), the highlight for sure was my being on stage – not as interviewee, but as interviewer. I can’t recall if I’d ever done such a thing before (if I had it was decades ago). Anyway, it felt like the first time – and early on I was really nervous! Yes – me! But I soon got into the swing of it – no doubt partly due to just how interesting my interviewees were: the Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko and American astronaut Leroy Chiao! We discussed all sorts of cybersecurity issues in space: how they duplicate the comms channels on the International Space Station, who’s responsible for installing updates, what happens if an incident occurs, and lots more besides…

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Hi folks – from Indonesia, where we’re holding our yearly international cybersecurity conference SAS – the Security Analyst Summit.

Dozens of cybersecurity events take place around the world every year, but ours has its own special format – its own special work-hard-play-hard ethic, and it’s always by the sea in a tropical clime. It attracts leading analysts and researchers of the most complex cyberattacks, and this year we’re in Bali ->

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Hi all!

As per my chokka, ongoing business-trip schedule, I recently found myself down in Sochi where we had our 12^th conference dedicated to industrial cybersecurity. Every year the industrial topic gets all the more popular, while our exhibition gets all the more large. Nearly 450 guests were in attendance this time – meaning we wouldn’t have all fitted into last year’s venue; accordingly, the view out the window was a little different to the usual one:

I kicked things off to a packed hall (just how I like it) ->

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All righty. I told you about the preparations and rehearsals for our birthday blowout. Today let me tell you about the blowout itself – and I don’t use that term for a party without reason…

So, the roof of the main stage had been repaired (put back), and the day promised to be a warm and sunny one; however… ->

Yes – that huge mass of cloud was heading right our way. And despite our crossed fingers, it didn’t pass us by…

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Hi folks!

Early July for us every year gives us something very special to celebrate here at K: our corporate birthday! For several years already we’ve held our all-day birthday party in Zavidovo out in the Moscow Region (here) (since it’s perhaps the only venue that can fit us all in). This year, suddenly – we’re 27 years old already, and to celebrate, we had more than 3300 guests attend the bash!…

In case you’re new to this here blog of mine, here are some posts on how things have gone down birthday-wise in recent years – 2023, 2022, 2021, and so on.

In today’s post – photos from the day before the shindig: a day of rehearsals and other preparations…

The main stage was up, everything so far going to plan ->

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I’ve a great many different hobbies and favorite activities – just like anyone. But one of the more unorthodox is long-distance beach-walking. What that?! Easy: Take any sandy beach – and stomp along it barefoot for as long as possible…

Does that include walking back all the way barefoot too? It does indeed. And I’ve never needed alternative options, which are, btw: (i) take a cab; (ii) take a taxi-boat by sea; and 3) be carried in/on some kinda carriage by porters (no WAY!)!

As regards some of the folks who may want to join me on such a barefoot beach-hike, I often have to feel sorry for them! Like I did recently in the Dominican Republic where we had our regional (North, Central and South America) partner conference: in-between work some colleagues joined me…

So we headed on down to the beach, looked left – not much happening down there, and then right – and decided that was the better option. The main reason: there was a tangible destination > that far end of the beach (with the trees behind it) where it seems to just end. Endpoint decided, off we popped…

Read on…