Online threats are one of the most important topics in the technology world. Now, governments, companies and individuals have begun to demand strong security practices related to online threats. Several fake payment offers and discounted COVID-19 tests were among the most common methods used by cyber criminals during the pandemic. Recently, phishing ads for fake QR codes and vaccination certificates for restaurants and public events have also become popular. We see that fraud activities related to the epidemic peaked in March 2021. With these increasingly complex threats, cyber security is becoming more important than anything else. We asked questions about cyber security to Kaspersky Türkiye Marketing Manager Unsal Yurdakonar.
Can you tell us about Kaspersky?
We are a global cyber security and digital privacy company founded in 1997. I can say that we are a global company with a global vision and a focus on international markets. We operate in 200 countries and regions, and have 34 offices in more than 30 countries. Our team consists of more than 4,000 highly qualified specialists. Kaspersky’s deep threat intelligence and security expertise is constantly transforming security solutions and services in order to protect businesses, important infrastructures, governments and consumers around the world. The company’s wide security portfolio includes leading endpoint protection solutions, as well as a wide range of specialized security solutions and services to combat sophisticated and evolving digital threats. More than 400 million global users are protected by Kaspersky technologies, and we help our 240,000 corporate customers protect their most important assets.
“Geopolitical tensions in the Middle East and Türkiye have increased significantly since January 2020 and will probably continue in 2021.”
What security solutions do you offer to organizations as Kaspersky?
Our portfolio offers a wide range of products for small, medium and large enterprises. We understand the cyber security needs of small and medium companies and offer multi-layered solutions that provide easy-to-manage and effective protection. We meet all the cyber security needs of large-scale organizations with our complete enterprise solutions that help prevent all kinds of cyber threats, detect even the most complex attacks, respond quickly to security incidents and anticipate the development of the threat environment. With our comprehensive solution portfolio and expertise that allows us to develop robust technologies, we use threat intelligence and machine learning to detect and prevent cyber attacks that organizations often encounter.
Technology is undergoing a great development and change every day. Recently, topics such as cloud and big data have become even more popular. What are your works and the solutions you offer?
In the small and medium-sized corporate segment, we observe that customers’ interests are spreading towards cloud application security, visibility and control of sensitive data and trade secrets, as well as protection of SaaS application. Kaspersky Endpoint Security Cloud offers a cloud discovery feature that helps uncover cloud services used on enterprise devices. This helps companies to ensure that only reliable services are used for the processing of business data. We have Kaspersky Hybrid Cloud Security to help organizations protect their private clouds, VDIs and workloads on public cloud platforms such as Google, Microsoft Azure and AWS. This solution also offers protection for software development environments (DevOps). To help high-end SMEs and small businesses protect their processes and data, we have a special product set called Kaspersky Optimum Security, which mainly includes Kaspersky EDR Optimum, Kaspersky Sandbox and Kaspersky Managed Detection & Response. Overall, these solutions offer instant visibility and insight into events, along with instant review and automatic response options. For the upper enterprise segment, on the other hand, we have created the Kaspersky Expert Security framework for companies with mature level of cyber security. It is important for such organizations to have a comprehensive solution that covers all aspects of IT security. This solution is based on the Kaspersky Anti-Targeted Attack Platform. Also, threat intelligence is very important for protection against advanced threats. For instance, we offer Kaspersky Digital Footprint Intelligence service. This service helps companies understand how cyber criminals can attack them, determine what information can be available to an attacker and find out if their infrastructure has already been compromised. Collecting automatic data from online content hosting services, public forums, social networks, instant messaging channels and groups, as well as restricted underground online forums and communities, it notifies customers about compromised employee accounts, data leaks or suspected attacks against their organizations. We offer a security awareness portfolio to help companies train their employees on the basics of security, secure access to cloud services, and working with sensitive data. Kaspersky Automated Security Awareness Platform and Kaspersky Adaptive Online Training are aimed at all employees, Kaspersky Interactive Protection Simulation is a team role-playing game designed for company managers, and Cybersecurity for IT Online is suitable for IT staff.
“As the organizations begin to recognize the importance of having an integrated approach to protecting their systems and data against increasingly sophisticated threat actors, we will see a major breakthrough in cyber security. ”
Do your security solutions offer any features that differentiate them from your competitors?
Kaspersky is unique in developing and maintaining all its solutions in-house. Our features and functions are built from the same single code-base by our internal team of experts. Both consumer and enterprise solutions from Kaspersky are consistently leaders in their respective segments. Looking at all the test results of the world’s leading independent security testing organizations over the last eight years, including AV-Test, AV-Comparatives, Virus Bulletin, as well as the media organizations that test Kaspersky’s consumer, B2B, and mobile products, Kaspersky ranked in Top 3 in 50 of the 62 different independent tests conducted globally in 2020. Also, Kaspersky ranked in Top 3 in 81% of reviews. This ranking highlights how the company's portfolio continues to outperform both corporate and consumer competition against known, unknown and advanced threats.
Do you think Turkish companies have sufficient protection in terms of cyber security?
This year, there is a potential for an increase in advanced persistent threat attacks both in the Middle East and Türkiye. This is due to geopolitical tension across the region, which is influencing the rise in espionage-based cyber attacks. Geopolitics has historically been the main driver for cyber attacks in order to steal sensitive data for national security purposes, among other factors such as economic, technological and foreign relations. Despite the current pandemic affecting the world, the geopolitical tensions in the Middle East and Türkiye have increased significantly since January 2020 and will probably continue in 2021.
What are the most popular security threats today?
As more companies move their businesses to internet and provide remote working capabilities to their employees, there will be an increase in attacks on these companies and more data leaks will also occur. As we have seen, targeted ransomware attacks are on the rise in 2021, as it has been successful in many countries, in contrast to widespread ransomware. The biggest companies will continue to be the most affected ones in this category as well.
What are the threats that await institutions in terms of security in the coming years and what advice can you give to protect against these threats?
To deal with social distancing and combat the pandemic, more and more companies are making their systems available online, without adequate security controls, leaving some databases and systems open to intruders. Data breaches occur when computer systems are not patched or configured incorrectly in an enterprise environment or a cloud hosting provider. Also, the normalization of remote working will put existing enterprise IT systems under further pressure, since the companies now must contend with an influx of connections on the corporate back-end. As the organizations begin to recognize the importance of having an integrated approach to protecting their systems and data against increasingly sophisticated threat actors, we will see a major breakthrough in cyber security. Also, we believe that some specialized security products will be in high demand. Since the people work from anywhere, they tend to connect to various wireless networks every day. Even in a supermarket, our phones tend to find at least one public Wi-Fi network. Therefore, those who are concerned about privacy and security should consider using a virtual private network or VPN. VPN protects user data and keeps the history of visited sites, search queries or other actions clean. While there are many companies that take cyber security seriously, especially the large enterprises, there are still many companies that neglect it as well. This applies particularly for SMEs. It is not sufficient to install a security software for businesses. In addition to a robust security solution that covers all potential threats to IT systems, they should have a holistic security approach that includes employee training and security policies in order to minimize the overall risks. We strongly recommend that businesses invest in threat intelligence services that help IT personnel stay up to date on current cyber threats and developments in this area. Lastly, it is worth repeating that installing security updates as soon as they are released and backing up existing data is extremely important for any user or organization.
What are Kaspersky's future goals?
We have ambitious growth plans for Türkiye. Kaspersky's comprehensive security portfolio includes leading endpoint protection and a range of proprietary security solutions and services to combat advanced and evolving digital threats. We protect businesses of all sizes, critical infrastructure, governments and customers all over the world. Therefore, while continuing to grow our share in SME and individual product sales in Türkiye, we will also aim to strengthen our position in the Turkish corporate market as well.
