The country's most influential and authoritative woman in the field of information technology was a co-founder of the famous global company Kaspersky Lab. Natalya Kasperskaya is one of the richest women in Russia and a mother of five children. He currently works as CEO of the InfoWatch group of companies, which she founded after leaving the IT giant (Kaspersky Lab).
early years
Natalia Ivanovna Kasperskaya (nee Shtutser) was born on February 5, 1966 in Moscow. Parents are engineers by profession, they worked at one of the closed defense institutes. Father, Ivan Mikhailovich, headed the laboratory. One of her ancestors, great-grandfather Ivan Shtutser, is the author of a popular 19th-century geography textbook.
In school years, she was distinguished by increased social activity and was respected by classmates. She was on the board of the school pioneer squad, then went on promotion to the district pioneer headquarters. In high school, was elected by the Komsomol.
An active Komsomol member for five years was engaged in basketball at the youth sports school. The girl quite seriously wanted to become a veterinarian, but soon she had to give up this dream. Natalia was not very given the study of chemistry. In the eighth grade, her parents decided to transfer her from a regular secondary school to a school with a physical and mathematical bias at MAI (Moscow Aviation Institute).
Carier start
After graduation, she entered Moscow State University. But according to the results of entrance exams, she didn’t go through the competition, having not got half a point. I transferred the documents to the Moscow Institute of Electronic Engineering (MIEM), where these estimates were enough for admission. Natalya Kasperskaya studied at the Faculty of Applied Mathematics from 1984 to 1989. The thesis was devoted to mathematical modeling of the cooling process of a nuclear reactor. She later received a bachelor's degree in business from the Open University of Great Britain.
After graduation, Natalya was assigned as a research fellow at the Moscow Central Research and Design Bureau. She worked only six months, after which she went on maternity leave. Natalia Kasperskaya's work biography in the field of information technology began in 1994, when she was 28 years old. A young woman was hired as a software seller in a new store, which was opened by a former teacher Evgeny Kaspersky from the Higher School of the KGB of the USSR. Salaries were around $ 50.
Business development
Since the fall of 1994, Natalya Ivanovna Kasperskaya became responsible for the sales of the AVP antivirus (AntiViral Toolkit Pro) as the head of the department. Since 1991, the program was developed by a team of programmers under the guidance of her husband. Thanks to its activity over the next few years, it was possible to create good channels for distributing the software product, organize technical support and begin expansion into foreign markets.
Starting with sales of $ 100-200 a month in 1994, a year later the company reached a volume of more than $ 130 thousand. Product sales began to grow rapidly, in 1996 amounting to more than 600 thousand, and the next year - more than a million. Profit was divided equally between the Kaspersky team and the parent company. By 1997, the Kaspersky spouses understood the potential of the business and decided to secede into an independent business.
Creation of Kaspersky Lab
In the summer of 1997, Natalya Ivanovna Kasperskaya initiated the organization Kaspersky Lab. It was on her initiative that the company received this name. For more than 10 years, she worked as the CEO of Kaspersky Lab. In the IT company, she owned 10% of the shares, 50% - Eugene and 20% went to two programmers. Antivirus sales continued to grow rapidly, reaching $ 67 million in 2006.
In 2007, she was removed from the management of the Laboratory due to divorce and disagreement with Eugene. Natalia remained in the company as the chairman of the created board of directors. By 2011, she finally broke up with Kaspersky Lab., The shares she owned were bought back by other shareholders. Under the leadership of Natalia, the once-small Russian IT company has grown into a global corporation with offices around the world. Capitalization in 2011 was estimated at 1.3 billion dollars with annual revenue of 700 million. Natalia’s personal fortune was estimated at 220-270 million. e.
Organization of your business
After dividing the business, as part of the payment, she went to InfoWatch. Natalya Kasperskaya decided to start developing the company's software product, which was aimed at protecting the data of large businesses and was intended for corporations with at least 300 stations. After the arrival of the new management, sales began to grow by 60-70% per year.
Today, Infowatch has grown into a group of companies specializing in protecting businesses from internal threats and targeted external attacks. The group holds approximately 50% of the local confidential data market. Regular customers are large Russian government agencies, private and public corporations. The company actively develops foreign markets, developing business in Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.