Kaspersky capped off a successful 2023 with impressive revenue exceeding $752 million and industry recognition for its innovative solutions. In this exclusive interview, Jaydeep Singh, General Manager for South Asia at Kaspersky, discusses the company's performance, evolving threats in the region, and their strategic outlook for 2024. With India a key market for Kaspersky, Singh emphasizes the focus on advanced solutions like Kaspersky Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) to combat complex threats. He outlines plans to leverage the Kaspersky Threat Intelligence Portfolio and Kaspersky Industrial CyberSecurity (KICS) to enable organizations to adopt more preventative cybersecurity measures.
DT: How did Kaspersky perform in 2023?
Jaydeep: In 2023, Kaspersky demonstrated notable performance in the market, showcasing steady growth propelled by its leading products and services. Particularly noteworthy was the recognition garnered by Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Business in the realm of modern endpoint security.
Our revenue for 2023 stood at an impressive US$752.485 million, marking significant growth compared to previous years. Despite the official declaration of results pending for CY 2023, our trajectory indicates promising outcomes.
Our revenue streams remained diversified, stemming from core activities such as license sales and cybersecurity-related services. Additionally, the acquisition of New Cloud technologies, the developer of the MyOffice office suite in 2022, further contributed to our revenue channels.
One of our standout achievements was the remarkable 54% year-on-year growth reported for Kaspersky Industrial CyberSecurity. This growth was fueled by the integration of new Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) functionality in 2022, which enhanced visibility into operational technology (OT), thus addressing the escalating cyber threat landscape.
Looking ahead, we anticipate sustaining this growth trajectory. The increasing frequency and sophistication of cybersecurity incidents, coupled with the evolving role of AI as a cyber threat tool, underscore the continued demand for robust security solutions. Moreover, heightened awareness within both existing and prospective clientele regarding the necessity of comprehensive security measures bodes well for continued expansion and innovation within the cybersecurity domain.
DT: What are your expectations in terms of business performance and market sentiments in 2024?
Jaydeep: India is one of Kaspersky's priority markets in the region, and the cybersecurity ecosystem is maturing significantly. Moreover, in 2023 leading organisations and even government agencies in the country faced major cyber threats and attacks. These incidents brought to the fore the importance of having a strong cybersecurity infrastructure. This is where our expertise and solutions come into play. We will continue to push EDR solutions like Kaspersky Endpoint Detection and Response to detect complex threats, investigate incidents, and effectively remediate problems.
In 2024, two major solutions that will be in focus for us in India are Kaspersky Threat Intelligence Portfolio which also includes Incident Response Services, Compromise Assessment Services and Kaspersky Industrial Cyber Security (KICS). Through these, we hope to enable organisations to adopt more evolved and preventive cybersecurity measures. This will take forward our vision of delivering Cyber Immunity to people and IT and OT organisations instead of just cybersecurity.
DT: Could you please throw light on two major tech trends that will dominate in 2024?
Jaydeep: The two major trends in terms of cyber threats that will dominate in 2024 include ransomware and APTs or Advanced Persistent Threats. These will be driven by, to a large extent, by AI.
In the last three years, ransomware attacks have continued to grow. Over 200K ransomware incidents have been detected by Kaspersky cybersecurity solution for businesses in India in 2023. Major ransomware like Fonix Ransomware and LockBit targeted global as well as Indian enterprises belonging to manufacturing, retail, agriculture, media and healthcare sectors. Fonix is known to have run malware attacks as Ransomware as a Service (RaaS), despite claims of closure. LockBit, another popular ransomware, attacked major organisations in India by infecting Windows systems.
India has consistently been featured in the top 12 targeted countries and territories for Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs), according to Kaspersky’s research on APTs. With the growth in use of the digital media within organisations in India, the organisations’ ICT supply chain is inevitably stretched with visible vulnerabilities that become targets for cyberattacks.
DT: What is your current channel strength and how are you planning to strengthen your partner network in 2024?
Jaydeep: Our Kaspersky United Partner Program assists our partners in doing business with us. We provide our partners with technology briefing webinars, awareness sessions, and training campaigns to ensure they can provide our clients with the best security adoption and awareness practices for their organisations. These enhance partner response to end-users by increasing their cyber awareness and skills on the Kaspersky platform. Kaspersky's channel strategy aims to improve partner education and support, focusing on corporate products and managed service providers (MSPs).
Additional benefits, such as free cyber training for partners and end users, have ensured everyone's cyber readiness and knowledge. To motivate our channel partners, the firm hopes to provide incentives such as more one-on-one assistance, technical education throughout the year, and meaningful recognition.
We have recently entered into a strategic partnership with Savex Technologies. We will collaborate with the company on its full business solution portfolio. This will enable Savex Technologies to offer organizations top-tier security solutions for safeguarding their businesses against emerging, unfamiliar, and elusive threats while maintaining resource efficiency. With this partnership, we aim to strengthen Kaspersky's B2B, Managed Services Provider (MSP) and Managed Security Services Partner (MSSP) business in the market.
DT: How emerging technologies like 5G, IoT, and cloud computing will shape the cybersecurity landscape in 2024?
Jaydeep: We are observing a rising trend of cyber threats and zero-day exploits ranging from state-sponsored advanced persistent threats to opportunistic cybercriminals that result in critical intellectual property and data theft. We are seeing an increase in the number of politically motivated insiders and insiders collaborating with criminals (primarily ransomware) and APT groups, both inside enterprises and among technology developers and vendors.
IT teams must be prepared to deal with evolving threats posed by emerging technologies like 5G, IoT, and cloud computing. Geo-targeted phishing or attacks related to Cloud Security, IoT, and AI are expected to become more prevalent. Employees must be educated and equipped to combat these sophisticated attacks. End users can prepare for upcoming challenges with an easy-to-use security solution like those offered by Kaspersky.
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