Natalya Ivanovna kasperskaya biography. Natalya kasperskaya. Three IT-entrepreneurs entered the rating of the richest women in Russia

« Godmother» Kaspersky Labs, whose anti-virus programs are installed on almost every second computer today, was able to consider the potential of a programmer husband and the prospects of an IT direction back in 1994. For the sake of saving the business, Natalya Kasperskaya hid the divorce for a long time and until 2011 remained the general director and co-owner of the Laboratory. I was able to build from scratch not only new family, but also new business- the InfoWatch group of companies, which made it possible to maintain the status of the most influential specialist in the IT world and become one of the richest women in Russia.

Dossier:

in detail

Today it’s hard to figure it out, the success story of Natalya Ivanovna Kaspersky’s business is a series of coincidences or carefully thought-out steps that helped a caring wife and mother of five children become one of the most successful and rich women in Russia.

"Natalia's biography is very similar to the path to incarnation" american dream". For several years she was on parental leave, went to work, where in six years she turned from a modest seller of computer equipment into the head of a leading and promising company for the creation of anti-virus programs, ”her husband Evgeny Kaspersky will say later.

And it all started with a frantic desire to help a talented programmer husband. Having felt the taste of entrepreneurship, Natalya insists in 1997 on opening her own company, which received from her light hand spouse's surname. And almost independently, having headed Kaspersky Lab, he takes the business to the world level.

Even after a dramatic divorce, an ideological split with her first husband and a difficult division of shares in the business, she found the strength to start over .

By investing in InfoWatch, which the businesswoman received as a share in the division of the business, Kaspersky was able to make the company a leader in the IT sector.

According to the owner, "at the time of launch in 2003 there was only one name," and in 2015, according to Forbes, InfoWatch's revenue exceeded 1 billion rubles.

Today (2017 - author's note) Natalya Kasperskaya is a co-owner of not only InfoWatch Group, but also joint companies with Igor Ashmanov Nanosemantics, Kribrum, the German company G Data Software AG, other high-tech companies, a peasant farm "Green lamb". Actively takes part in grant, public and government projects. He is a laureate and winner of Russian and international competitions in various business categories. Included in more than 15 ratings of the most influential and successful people, including "The richest women of Russia", according to forbes.ru

Source: Forbes magazine

Childhood and youth: activist, sportswoman and diligent student

Natalya Ivanovna Kasperskaya, nee Shtutser, was born into a typical family of representatives of the “technical intelligentsia”. She became the late and only child of the ever-busy engineers who worked in "closed" institutes.

However, her childhood and youth cannot be called standard and boring. An ordinary schoolgirl was unusually active.

"Engaged social activities and was even a member of the regional pioneer headquarters. In general, trips to the pioneer headquarters are one of the most vivid childhood memories: we always came up with something there, staged performances, made propaganda teams, traveled around the country, ”- N. Kasperskaya

Her interests included standard children's hobbies of collecting stamps, badges, coins, singing in the school choir and creative drawing, writing poetry. There was also time for sports, including swimming, cross-country skiing, and professional basketball at the Youth Sports School.

thinking about future profession, faced with a choice between a dream and the opinion of parents.

“I even seriously considered choosing the profession of a veterinarian, but in high school I faced completely insurmountable problems with chemistry. ... parents - "techies" ... naturally, advised me to enter a technical university, "- N. Kasperskaya

Therefore, I graduated high school already within the walls of the Moscow Aviation Institute at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics. Eventually higher education received at the Faculty of Applied Mathematics of the Moscow Institute of Electronic Engineering, having received a red diploma.

The first entrepreneurial experience, or "the way the stars were formed"

Further fate The future top manager is closely connected with Evgeny Kaspersky, whom she met in 1987 during a vacation in a KGB sanatorium.

Stormy romance with joint fun holidays, hiking, kayaking logically ended in a wedding, but had its sad consequences. Eugene, a student at the technical faculty of the Higher School of the KGB, was assigned to Chita, where the young wife was ready to go as a Decembrist.

Thanks to the intervention of the mother-in-law, the Kaspersky family remained in Moscow, and Evgeny begins his career in the Ministry of Defense, where he meets computer viruses.

Until 1994, the young wife was raising two sons. But he begins to think about finding a job.

“I started doing business solely because of my own weakness. After six years spent at home with children, I'm tired of sitting in four walls. It was already impossible. I deliberately ran away from home. From domestic difficulties”, - N. Kasperskaya

According to the businesswoman herself, one of the main features of her character was laziness. Therefore, she took the path of least resistance - in 1994 she got a job at the Kami company, where her husband worked at that time. Kaspersky was categorically against such a decision, as if he felt what family cooperation could lead to. But she definitely decided to be close to her husband.

At first, she traded in computer accessories, later in software. She rose through the ranks to become a sales manager by promoting and registering her husband's anti-virus product (AVP).

“It wasn't easy. I did not understand computers, I had no idea what sales were, I did not have financial and managerial skills. Of course, mistakes could not be avoided, for example, I tried to sell everything personally, which is wrong ... Now I recall with tenderness that time: people did not understand why they should buy software if they could copy everything from a neighbor to a floppy disk, ”- N. Kasperskaya

How Kaspersky Lab was born

After a trip to Hannover and a visit to the CeBIT exhibition, he invites her husband to start his own business. Finding no support, she herself opens the Data Rescue Center company in 1995. However, the business quickly went bankrupt.

Problems in the seemingly reliable, large and unsinkable Kama firm forced Kaspersky to make a choice. And he agrees with his wife to become the first in own business, refusing the offer of an English company, where, despite the fame of the name, he would be the second.

The history of Evgeny Valentinovich Kaspersky's business is filled with bright moments and resembles rapidly changing pictures of a kaleidoscope. But it was the wife who played a special role in it.

Natalya made the main and decisive step even at the moment of choosing the name of the company. Taught by her first unsuccessful entrepreneurial experience, she insisted on sonorous name. Options like "Casper and Co" evoked comical associations, while the name "Kaspersky Lab" immediately became recognizable in the computer world.

The team of start-up entrepreneurs mainly consisted of programmers who were absolutely uninterested in administrative work. Therefore, the woman had to take the reins of government into her own hands.

I got my job through connections, through family ties, just by marrying computer genius. Then, however, I had to work hard to turn a brilliant work into a business.

And she, as a businessman, succeeded. Sales growth in the first years was 300%. The staff expanded from 6 to 600 people, international contracts appeared, the "Laboratory" received worldwide recognition.

The leader clearly names the reasons for the startup’s success:

• The company successfully found itself at the origins of a new market, where the Kasperskys were pioneers.
• The idea came at the right time, when the growth in demand was just incredible.
• Competitors wandered blindly, which put all participants on an equal footing.

In companies, as in people's lives, a lot also depends on luck. From the position of the stars, if you like. You can study some business methods for a long time, try to apply them, but if “the stars do not add up”, it is unlikely that everything will be easy,” N. Kasperskaya laughs.

However, luck alone was not enough to manage a rapidly growing business. There was a catastrophic lack of knowledge, which pushed the woman to receive a second education at the British Open University.

Divorce - collapse of hopes or business partnership

The first crack in the relationship appeared immediately after the creation of a joint business. BUT career wives and radically different views on many things of the spouses played a key role in the breakup of the Kasperskys, which occurred in 1997.

We officially filed for divorce in 1998, more than a year hiding the true situation from others.

“Our divergence was a rather big blow, ... we risked losing everything, but somehow we managed to hold on, to separate the personal from the public, so to speak, from business, to separate it,” - N. Kasperskaya

Natalya continues to manage the ex-husband's business and in 2000 becomes the general director of the company. It was under her that the turnover of the "Laboratory" grew at a cosmic pace.

The ideological split with Kaspersky led to the removal of Natalya in 2007 from the position of CEO and to a complete separation in 2011 after the sale of her remaining shares.

Kasperskaya Natalya Ivanovna – CEO InfoWatch Group of Companies, co-founder of Kaspersky Lab

Biography

In 1997, together with ex-husband Evgeny Kaspersky Natalia Kasperskaya founded the Kaspersky Lab company and became its CEO. For 10 years, under the leadership of Natalia Kaspersky, Kaspersky Lab has gone from an unknown startup to one of the leaders in the international IT market with a turnover of half a billion (in dollar terms).

In 2003, Kaspersky Lab created a subsidiary company, InfoWatch, which was engaged in developments in the field of protecting enterprises from information leaks. In 2007, Natalya Kasperskaya took the post of CEO in this company. In the same year, at the initiative of Natalia, InfoWatch begins active expansion, first to the European, and then to the Middle East and Asian markets.

From 2009 to 2013, Natalya Kasperskaya headed the working group on information and communication technologies within the framework of the Federal Target Program "Research and Development in Priority Areas of Development of the Scientific and Technological Complex of Russia for 2007-2013" of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation.

In 2010, at the initiative of Natalia, InfoWatch, together with Ashmanov & Partners, created a subsidiary, Kribrum, which develops a service for monitoring and analyzing the reputation of companies, brands, and persons in the media space.

In 2011, with the acquisition German company cynapspro GmbH, which develops products to protect corporate network workstations, Natalia transformed InfoWatch into a holding company of the same name.

In early 2012, Natalia became a shareholder of the Canadian company Appercut, which became part of the InfoWatch holding. Appercut is developing a software product designed to automatically audit the source code of custom business applications for vulnerabilities and bookmarks.

In October 2012, Natalya Kasperskaya invested in shares and joined the board of directors of the German anti-virus company G Data Software AG.

In 2013, Natalya Kasperskaya invested in the Russian startup Taiga, which was part of the InfoWatch Group of Companies. Taiga designs innovation system protection mobile devices from tracking and stealing information.

Led by Natalia Kaspersky InfoWatch became the recognized leader of the DLP market in Russia and CIS countries.

Family

Natalia is married for the second time. Husband - businessman Igor Ashmanov, a specialist in the field artificial intelligence, software development, project management. Natalia Kasperskaya has five children, two sons from her first marriage and three daughters from her second.

Achievements, awards

Natalya Kasperskaya is a laureate of numerous prestigious international awards in the field of information technology:

Laureate of the prestigious international award "Russian Business Leader of the Year" for merits in the development of the Russian IT industry according to Horasis, the Global visions community.

Winner of the Women in Technology Awards EMEA 2014, in the nomination "Best Information Technology Entrepreneur".

Nominated by the British edition of BRIC Magazine for the title of the most influential person in Russia in the first quarter of 2015 for his contribution to the development of the IT industry.

Laureate of the "Information Security of the Bank" award 2015.

Natalia Kasperskaya actively invests in the development of high-tech companies, is a member of the advisory boards of:

- Russian Venture Company,

Department of Strategy, Analysis and Forecast of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation.

Member of the board:

Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP),

Association of Software Developers (ARPP) "Domestic Soft".

Member of:

Expert Council on Russian Software under the Ministry of Communications and mass communications RF,

Working subgroup "Internet + society" under the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation,

Grant Committee of the Skolkovo Foundation,

Skoltech Board of Trustees,

Union of machine builders of Russia,

Information Protection Association (IPA),

Associations of Experts information security BISA,

Board of Trustees of the Eurasian Cancer Foundation (EAFO).

Links

December 2015:

November 2015:

October 2015:

September 2015:

August 2015:

She was born on February 5, 1966 in Moscow. As a child, Natalya favored animals and dreamed of becoming a veterinarian, but categorically did not work out with chemistry at school. But everything was in perfect order with mathematics, and her parents - a mother, a design engineer, and a physico-mathematical father-candidate - predicted a great future for Natalya on a technical path. Even before entering the institute, Natalia showed herself to be a leader - she was engaged in active pioneering and social activities.

After listening to her parents, Kaspersky entered the specialty "Applied Mathematics" of the Moscow Institute of Electronic Engineering. In 1989 she received her diploma. Subsequently, she received a bachelor's degree from the Open University in the UK, majoring in Business.

Before going into sales and management, Natalya worked for several years at the Central Scientific and Design Bureau of Moscow as a private researcher. While still a student, she met the talented programmer Evgeny Kaspersky, and when in 1994 the opportunity arose to go to work at the Kami Science and Technology Center - the one where Evgeny began his career - Kaspersky seized the opportunity. In "Kami" she took up an unusual activity for herself. At first, Natalya worked as a sales manager in the computer equipment department, but soon she was transferred to manage the anti-virus development department, where Evgeny Kaspersky worked on AVP.

By 1997 - when Kaspersky's anti-virus product began to be sold, and things at the Kami Research and Development Center had completely deteriorated - Natalya raised the issue of separating and creating her own company. Eugene Kaspersky at first grumbled and did not want any changes - they say, they will only interfere with the work on the project. But Natalia still persuaded her husband.

In 1997, the Kaspersky Lab company appeared. Evgeniy acted according to the principle of "the idea ... of the initiator" - he threw all organizational responsibility on Kaspersky and returned to software development. At first, Natalya Kaspersky had a hard time. But she managed. And in 1998, hired technical, commercial and financial directors came to her aid.

In 1998, the family of Natalia and Evgeny fell apart under the pressure of everyday squabbles. This did not seem to affect the company. Until 2007, the leadership and responsibility for the activity of Kaspersky Lab in the market lay mainly on the shoulders of CEO Natalya Kaspersky. In 2007, as a major shareholder, she was elected to the post of head of the board of directors, while Evgeny took the place of general director.

In 2004, in parallel with her work at the "Laboratory", Natalia began to develop another area of ​​activity - the development of data protection systems in corporate intranet networks (DLP systems). After 3 years, Kaspersky took the post of CEO of the InfoWatch company she founded, a developer and distributor of such systems. Today, this company has a huge potential for expansion into Western markets. In Russia, InfoWatch became the first in its field.

In Russia, the successful work of Natalya Kaspersky was noted in 2008. She was ranked 4th in the top 10 most successful businesswomen in the country. By this time, Natalia already had many awards from foreign IT publications. In the same year, Kaspersky was elected a member of the Russian-German Chamber of Commerce. By the way, in 2010, Natalya Kasperskaya won the second place among the best top managers in the Russian IT industry.

In business, Natalia appreciates teamwork. As a leader, she knows how to listen to the opinions of specialists before committing rash acts. At the same time, she does not accept all kinds of team building and other “nonsense” inspired from abroad. Work with Russian programmers requires a completely different approach, and Kaspersky is aware of this. In the "Laboratory" developers were never chastised for being late, but they had to do their part on time.

Married to Evgeny Kaspersky, Natalya became the mother of two children. After the divorce, she began to live with a prominent IT figure Igor Ashmanov. By 2011, she became the mother of two more children. The last daughter Masha was born in March 2009. A month earlier, fans of Kaspersky Anti-Virus had presented Natalya with a comic list of possible names for the child, each of which somehow related to the anti-virus area.

Natalia Kasperskaya knows two well foreign languages- German and English. Often travels on vacation ski resorts, is interested in tourism and travel. Natalia plays the guitar well.

Kasperskaya (Stutser) Natalya Ivanovna- CEO of InfoWatch - a developer of systems for protecting confidential information from internal threats. For more than 10 years she was the head of Kaspersky Lab.

Biography

Natalya Ivanovna Shtutser (later Kasperskaya) was born on February 5, 1966. Parents are typical representatives of the “technical intelligentsia”. only child was born late by those standards: his father was already 46 years old, his mother - 30. Parents are engineers, worked in "closed" institutes, always busy.

Played sports in my youth long time I played basketball at the Youth Sports School. In winter, she went skiing in the Moscow region, and in summer she was fond of swimming. She also collected stamps, badges and Soviet coins, painted portraits of her friends and sang in the school choir.

In an interview, Natalya Kasperskaya said that she dreamed of becoming a veterinarian:

“I really enjoyed working with animals. I even seriously thought about choosing such a profession, but when I moved to high school, I started having completely insurmountable problems with chemistry. And since my parents are “techies”, there was no special alternative. Naturally, I was advised to enter a technical university.”

last two school years studied at the Physics and Mathematics School at the Moscow Aviation Institute, then entered the Moscow Institute of Electronic Engineering (MIEM) at the Faculty of Applied Mathematics.

1986: Acquaintance with Evgeny Kaspersky

In 1994, she came to work at the Kami Research and Development Center, where she headed the AVP anti-virus project.

1997: Co-founder of Kaspersky Lab

In 1997, Natalia convinced her husband to start his own company and make the name a brand. The founding father worked technical part. Natalya Kasperskaya became the CEO of Kaspersky Lab and was engaged in sales, personnel and access to international markets.

Six people initially worked in Kaspersky Lab, but gradually it grew to international group companies headquartered in Moscow, ten foreign representative offices and a staff of more than 500 people. To questions like: “What is the success of the company?”, “Who did more for success?” etc. Natalia was responsible for her life dozens of times. The company came at the right time in right place, very successful - there was just a growth of the market, that is, the market was still new, this is the first. Secondly, in Russia it was generally unknown, that is, the Kasperskys, in fact, were the pioneers in this sense in the field of software. The third is that the competitors also did not know where to go, that is, everyone wandered blindly and made just as many mistakes. All were on an equal footing.

In October 2007, Natalya Kasperskaya became the company's CEO and sole owner of InfoWatch, a developer of systems for protecting confidential information from insider threats.

2011: Sale of a part of a share in Kaspersky Lab

On January 20, 2011, it became known that the American direct investment fund General Atlantic acquired a large stake in Kaspersky Lab. This is the first time in the history of an anti-virus developer that a professional institutional investor has entered the company.

The parties do not disclose either the size of the stake in Kaspersky Lab acquired by the Americans or the amount paid, but they report that upon completion of the transaction, General Atlantic will become the second largest shareholder of the Lab. The largest shareholder of the company will remain Evgeny Kaspersky, who has a controlling stake.

Part of the shares transferred to the General Atlantic fund previously belonged to one of the company's former shareholders, the other part, which Evgeny Buyakin called "symbolic", was issued additionally. According to CNews, Natalya Kasperskaya, co-founder and chairman of the Board of Directors of Laboratoriya, acted as the main seller of the shares. Shares of Eugene Kaspersky did not participate in the transaction.

Natalya Kasperskaya told CNews that the share of the new investor in the "Laboratory" will be "less" than 20%. According to her, she retained a substantial part of the company's shares, and she has no plans to leave the chair of the board of directors, "unless the shareholders decide otherwise."

She plans to invest the proceeds in her own projects. These are the developer of solutions for leak protection Infowatch, the Nanosemantics company, which deals with the semantic analysis of written speech, and the Kribrum project, which studies the reputation of companies by analyzing their mentions on the Internet and other media environments.

The initiator of the deal was General Atlantic: its Executive Director John Bernstein says that the fund has been looking for a manufacturer of protective investment solutions for a long time and "approached Kaspersky Lab about a year ago with a proposal for cooperation."

According to the source of the agency, the motive for the crime of the Savelyevs and their friends was the desire to pay off the ransom received for loans made in one of the banks.

The attackers searched the Internet for a potential victim for ransom. Their choice fell on Ivan Kaspersky after they found his home and work addresses on his Vkontakte page.

At the same time, according to the Kommersant newspaper, the kidnapping was organized by a repeatedly convicted "professional criminal", and the attackers followed the young man for several months, choosing a scheme for committing a crime.

Interlocutors of LifeNews said that the kidnapping was carried out "unprofessionally". At about 8:15 a.m., Ivan was filmed by surveillance cameras in the Strogino metro station closest to his place of work, and at about 9 a.m., the kidnappers forced him to call his relatives and hand over the terms of a ransom of 3 million euros.

The second evidence of the unprofessionalism of the criminals, law enforcement officers called the content of the prisoner in the same house in the garden partnership "Grove" near Sergiev Posad, where they lived themselves.

• On the evening of April 21, 2011, LifeNews reported that a ransom was paid to the kidnappers of Ivan Kaspersky, the amount of which was not disclosed. After the prisoner was released, law enforcement sources said the media had been misinformed to appease the kidnappers.

In an interview with RSN, Natalya Kasperskaya said that her son was not tortured and was kept handcuffed and locked in a bathhouse. The kidnappers constantly changed the phone numbers from which they made ransom calls. Till law enforcement engaged in liberation young man, she and her husband "sat on Petrovka in a separate room and waited for the kidnapper's call." On the last day, the offender did not get in touch, and the parents of I.Kaspersky found out that everything was over, after the information appeared in the media.

“On Sunday, at Easter, we were still waiting for a call, but we already saw that the operatives were increasingly conferring without our participation, they were clearly preparing for something,” says Ashmanov. “This is a very dangerous moment when the vectors diverge: the operas need to grab the kidnappers, and the parents need to return the kidnapped child alive and unharmed.” After lunch, the operatives said that there would be no more calls, the kidnappers were identified and caught, now they are going after Ivan, who is no longer in danger. The operation ended in the evening. Ivan was released. Five participants in the abduction were detained (three are members of the same family), four of them are now under arrest, an investigation is underway. Evgeny and Natalya Kasperskaya with Ashmanov were invited to the office of the head of the department, congratulated and offered to celebrate happy event vodka with coarsely chopped sausage and cheese. Ivan's mother saw Ivan only at 4 o'clock in the morning, before that he was taken testimony.

• According to the official information of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate, Ivan Kaspersky was released from the hands of the kidnappers only on Sunday, April 24, 2011. By this time, his location had already been located on a working mobile phone. This information has been made public official representative the capital's police department Viktor Biryukov. According to law enforcement officers, Ivan Kaspersky's condition is "satisfactory."

According to the official information of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate, the release was carried out as a result of a military operation by officers of the FSB, the MUR and special forces. The operation in the area of ​​Sergiev Posad "passed without a single shot being fired."

The kidnappers had an appointment to hand over the ransom in Moscow, where the Saveliev family and one of their accomplices went. The cars they were driving were stopped to check their documents, and the perpetrators were detained.

At the same time, another capture group entered the territory of the garden where the prisoner was kept. Ivan Kaspersky was found in the building of the bathhouse, where he was guarded by another accomplice of the Saveliev family.

Ashmanov did not rule out that the ultimate goal of the bandits was not a ransom at all.

“I think they wanted to put pressure on Evgeny Kaspersky or Natalya, the shareholders of Kaspersky Lab,” he argues. “Perhaps we never heard the true demands.”

2012: Purchase of 16% in the German antivirus company G Data

On October 15, 2012 it became known that Natalya Kasperskaya owning InfoWatch holding acquired 16.8% of stocks of the German anti-virus company G Data Software AG.

The shares were bought from several former minority shareholders, in particular from a Berlin-based venture capital investment company. On October 23, at the annual meeting of GData shareholders, Natalia Kasperskaya will be elected to the board of directors of the German company.

The cooperation between Natalia Kaspersky and G Data began in 1996, when the co-founder of the German company Kai Figge offered Natalia a partnership at the CeBIT exhibition in Hannover. Then Natalya headed the anti-virus company Kaspersky Lab, and the two anti-virus manufacturers agreed on technological cooperation.

As Natalya Kasperskaya herself stated, she has been watching G Data for many years and believes that she "deserves more international success." “In a few years, G Data has made a major technological breakthrough. As a member of the Board of Directors of G Data, I will be committed to building the company's outstanding reputation for international market, and I also want to bring my knowledge and experience in the anti-virus industry to the company,” Natalia said.

As the press service of InfoWatch commented on Tadviser, the company has long looked aside European companies, and this acquisition fits into the plans for promotion in this market. Moreover, this is not the last acquisition, but the press service refused to give more detailed comments. Further plans to increase the package in G data are also unknown, as well as the cost of the acquisition.

2015: Foundation of the farm

As TAdviser found out, in the fall of 2015 Natalya Kasperskaya established the Green Lamb peasant farm. The farm is located in the suburbs, in the picturesque places of the Serpukhov district, Natalya Kasperskaya confirmed to TAdviser. More details - in a separate.

2017: Head of the Information Security Committee

August 2, 2017 President of the group of companies (GK) InfoWatch Natalia Kaspersky was elected head of the Information Security Committee, created by the Association of Software Developers "Domestic Software". The Committee was formed as part of the implementation of the program "Digital Economy Russian Federation”, which defines the goals, objectives, directions and deadlines for the implementation of the main measures public policy to create the necessary conditions for the development of the digital economy in Russia.

2018: Natalya Kasperskaya became the owner of Neklis-bank

In February 2018, the CEO of the InfoWatch group of companies, Natalya Kasperskaya, spoke about how she was forced to become the owner of Neklis Bank. According to her, the deal was not carried out from a good life: the credit institution is “a big headache". Read more.

Family

Natalya Ivanovna has two children from her first marriage and two from her second. Natalya Kasperskaya has repeatedly stated that four children are not so many. And, if there had been an opportunity earlier, she would have given birth again.

After the publication of a message on the ITpedia website that Natalya Kasperskaya celebrates her birthday on February 5, readers had the idea to give something to the respected master of the Russian IT market. Being limited in funds, they decided to donate a list of names for the fourth child of Natalia. It was not known for certain who Natalya was waiting for - a girl or a boy. Therefore, the list of names spontaneously began to include both female and male. Maybe it's an accident, but the name Maria, which the child eventually received, was on the list of ITpedia readers long before her birthday.

• Trajan- a real imperial Roman name, consonant with the professional interests of Natalia Ivanovna
• Klava- No comments
• Bagomir- Bringing peace to software filled with bugs
• Optimizander- consonant with "optimizer" (occupation of Natalya's husband - Igor Ashmanov)
• Aipion- there is an assumption that the IPO is the desired goal of Natalia
• Aitislav- Glory to information technology
• insiderina- in tune with Natalia's professional interests
• virusilium- a derivative of the name Vasily and the word "virus"
• Yuesbina- from USB - the main tool of insiders with whom Natalya Ivanovna is fighting
• Avira- the name of the antivirus, quite suitable for the name of a person
• Folder- folder - a person with this name is doomed to become a good dad
• Exenia- from the extension of the executable file exe
• Kav- for son - from KAV - Kaspersky Anti-Virus
• Keys- for daughter - from KIS - Kaspersky Internet Security
• Casperite- for son - abbreviated from the surname and IT
• Masha!- just Maria, without reference to IT and profession.
• Runetta Igorevna- loudly
• Verusoid- a derivative of the name Vera and the word "virus"
• Ivanka- a derivative of the Patronymic, Name and Surname of Natalya Ivanovna, very respected by me
• skyper- a derivative of the Skype program, as well as meaning free communication with the whole world without borders
• Bluetooth or Bluetooth- you know what the name comes from
• Connectin- derived from Konstantin and connect
• immunity- strong immune system
• Camputador and Camputador- Spanish computer names echoing Toreador

Hobby

He is fond of playing the guitar, skiing, hiking, reading professional literature, likes to travel in the company of friends and children. Fluent in English and German.

Quotes

• About Evgeny Kaspersky as a manager- Kaspersky is not a leader. He is engaged in other activities that have little to do with the formal position of "CEO". Since Eugene is the main shareholder of the company, he can appoint himself to any desired position.

• About the crisis at Kaspersky Lab- Unfortunately, over the past 4 years, the Lab has focused its portfolio of products (in fact) in the field of protection for Windows quite strongly ... The problem is that modern technologies they are developing quite quickly - new platforms appear, under which there are either no viruses, or they are very rare. They need new types of protection… Another threat to the market is free antiviruses, which, although gradually, are gaining more and more popularity ... The third problem that I would pay attention to is the so-called. targeted attacks. Those. attacks with a specific target. For example, special Trojans written for Alfa-Bank systems. Antiviruses are powerless against such threats. We need new solutions. I do not rule out that they will come not from old market players, but from newcomers ... At one time, I convinced Kaspersky and other shareholders that it was necessary to attract external capital just for the purpose of buying businesses and technologies in new interesting areas. We even managed to attract an investor, but, unfortunately, Kaspersky blocked the idea of ​​development through acquisitions... To be honest, I do not see new growth drivers within the company that would give LK the opportunity to organically grow faster than the market. Consequently, the business growth rate will continue to decline.
• About own employment- Basically, I am engaged in the affairs of the company. Another 2-3 times a week there are questions about the Kribrum project - this is such a project for automatic monitoring social networks, Infowatch has a solid share in it. On the third spot goes Nanosemantics is a company that works in the field of artificial intelligence. She is also known for her "mass" project - http://www.iii.ru. Now we are reworking it quite a lot and by the summer we plan to roll out something completely new. And last week, for example, the Cebit exhibition took all my time ... I have a couple of small projects, but I take much less personal part in them.
• About my teachers- I consider the head of Kami - Alexey Borisovich Remizov - my first business teacher. My second husband, Igor Ashmanov, who has a number of high-tech businesses, had a huge influence on my formation as a businessman (or businesswoman?? :)).
• About the female president of Russia- We have a lot of women in the government. Two ministers and a vice-speaker, that's not counting a bunch of lower-ranking officials. Perhaps the next president will be a woman. Just for this, a worthy candidate should (more precisely, should) appear. So far, there are no such politicians on our horizon.
• On the meeting with Vladimir Putin- Just three weeks ago, several representatives of the IT community of software developers met with the Prime Minister in the Novosibirsk Academgorodok and proposed a number of measures to stimulate domestic software development. The prime minister accepted our proposals, and, as far as I know, relevant instructions have already been given to the ministries. In particular, we proposed introducing mandatory reporting by state departments and state-owned companies on the volume of purchased domestic and imported software. They proposed some measures to support state patenting abroad, as well as the possibility for high-tech enterprises to invest in development without the risk of being closed. tax office for losses. The prime minister promised to think about these two points. There were several other proposals - to stimulate the export of high-tech products, to develop self-determining organizations, etc. The prime minister accepted these proposals and gave instructions to the responsible ministers.
»

Perhaps Evgeny Kaspersky would have remained a talented, but little-known programmer, if not for his ex-wife Natalia. It was she who established the successful sale of her husband's IT developments. And if the business began to flourish, then the Kaspersky family broke up. But Natalya and Evgeny managed to maintain their relationship and are still co-owners of Kaspersky Lab.

Divorce is not a hindrance to business

- Natalia, the company was founded in 1997, and two years later you divorced Evgeny Kaspersky, with whom you lived for almost 10 years and gave birth to two sons ...

We both understood that the company was very dear to us. At that time, the "Laboratory" was a little over a year old, it had just begun to rise. The divorce of the two founders could be negatively perceived by the market and put her future at risk. Kaspersky and I agreed not to tell anyone about the divorce (according to rumors, Eugene was the initiator of the breakup, as if he had left the family after meeting another woman. - Note). For a whole year, we, like two partisans, were silent and formally remained husband and wife. There was no talk of a business section at all.

Was it a difficult decision for you?

- The interests of the company for me have always been above personal experiences. I perceived Kaspersky Lab as my child, I saw growth prospects. And even though emotions sometimes went wild, I understood that Kaspersky and I found ourselves in such a bond that cannot be broken. Zhenya was an important link - a unique analyst, one of the world's top ten best experts on information security. And the whole business part rested on me.

"Kaspersky Lab"

In 1989, a graduate of the Higher Red Banner School of the KGB (now the Institute of Cryptography, Communications and Informatics of the Academy of the FSB of the Russian Federation) Evgeny Kaspersky “cured” his computer of a virus using a program that he wrote himself. In 1991, his wife Natalya patented the AVP program (later Kaspersky Anti-Virus) in the All-Russian Authors' Society. In 1997, the couple established Kaspersky Lab. Two years later, the company increased its share of the Russian antivirus market from 5% to 50%. Turnover of "Kaspersky Lab" for 2009 made $480 million. More than 1700 experts work in it. According to Finance magazine, Natalia Kasperskaya's fortune is estimated at $462 million.

- They say that the success of Kaspersky Anti-Virus is your merit?

The thing is, if it wasn't for antivirus program, which caught viruses well, there would be nothing to sell. My role as a leader was not the last, but I would not completely attribute success to myself. Business is teamwork.

I don't care about ratings. I was disappointed in them. It seems to me that it would be interesting to rank entrepreneurs who have built a business from scratch and calculate how much money they have earned. Another issue is that it is difficult to compile such a rating - the information, as a rule, is closed. For example, how much does Kaspersky Lab cost? $100 million or $5 billion? No one knows. This is a CJSC whose shares are not for sale. Therefore, when I saw myself in the ranking of billionaires, I was very surprised. I would be glad to see my millions in some more tangible form.

Why didn't you change your last name?

- I'm used to it. The divorce happened about two years after we stopped living together. By this time, I had “overgrown” with documents for this surname and decided that I would not change it. In addition, they already knew me as Natalya Kasperskaya. To be honest, even at the age of 20, getting married for the first time, I didn’t really want to change my maiden name. But Kaspersky said: “Then we are leaving the registry office!” And the second husband did not persuade me to change my surname.

- You have two sons from your marriage with Kaspersky and two daughters were born in a marriage with Igor Ashmanov. How did you decide?

- I got new family– how without children? If I had married a second time earlier, I would have given birth again, and so I have only four. I have something to compare with, and I can say that now it is easier to raise children. Instead of diapers - diapers, instead of washing in a basin - washing machines, give birth to health! Besides communication with the child is so nice! Especially until he insists on his own opinion, does not stomp on you with his foot, does not run away for the night: “Tonight I am sleeping with a girl.” The first year is the best. Now the youngest Masha, she is a little over a year old, has gone. Gets out of hand and runs away. Everything, my lafa is over.

“I won’t take my children to the “Laboratory”

What are your sons doing?

- The eldest son Maxim is now graduating from the Faculty of Geology of Moscow State University, and I do not see my drive in him. As long as he does not set himself clear goals. And I sometimes get the feeling that his parents are more concerned about his future than he is. With the younger one it's easier, he followed in our programmer's footsteps. I got a job in one firm, something didn’t work out there and he quickly left. I noticed that the children of successful people are quite often sloppy, inert: they have everything. I try to keep mine in good shape. I heard that wealthy Americans “drive their children out into the street”, forcing them to earn their own money for study and housing.

Children of successful people are quite often sloppy, inert: they have everything. But I try to keep mine in good shape.

"But you're not ready?"

- Not sure. Although I say: you will graduate from the university and do not expect support from us. Further - himself.

Are you a successful mom?

- Wait and see. Both sons did it themselves. Vanya won the Olympiad without exams, the elder is also a good student. But what they will do in life - time will tell. Of course, I would like to have someone to transfer cases. But I will not take them to the "Laboratory" until they gain experience: nevertheless, the surname obliges.

- You probably have nothing to dream about ...

“I am not a dreamer at all. I have desires and goals. For example, now I really want to learn how to snowboard well.

DOSSIER:

Natalya Ivanovna Kasperskaya

• She was born on February 5, 1966 in Moscow.
• In 1989 she graduated from the Moscow Institute of Electronic Engineering with a degree in applied mathematics.
• In 1994, she headed her husband's anti-virus project at KAMI.
• In 1997, she became one of the founders and CEO of Kaspersky Lab.
• In 2007, she took the chair of the board of directors. In the same year, she registered InfoWatch.
• Second time married. Husband - businessman Igor Ashmanov.
• Mother of four children: from the first marriage - Maxim (21 years old) and Ivan (18 years old), from the second - Alexandra (4 years old) and Maria (1 year old).