Natalya Kaspersky

Russian IT entrepreneur (born 1966)

Natalya Ivanovna Kasperskaya (Наталья Ивановна Касперская; born 5 February 1966 in Moscow, Soviet Union)—who, in the West, uses as her surname the masculine form Kaspersky—is a Russian IT entrepreneur, President of the InfoWatch Group of companies and co founder and former CEO of antivirus security software company Kaspersky Lab. In addition, she is one of the wealthiest women in Russia and one of the most influential figures in the Russian IT industry.

Natalya Kasperskaya (maiden name Stutser) was born on 5 February 1966 in Moscow into a family of engineers and Soviet defense research institute employees. Natalya was elected as a member of her school pioneer council, and later as a member of the district pioneer headquarters, and was also a Komsomol member and organizer. Alongside her main education, Natalya also played basketball in the Children's and Youth Sports School and seriously intended to become a veterinarian until giving up on the dream because of difficulties with studying chemistry. In the eighth year of her education, Natalya moved from an ordinary secondary school to a physics mathematical school run by the Moscow Aviation Institute. where she studied applied mathematics (1984 1989), and the topic of her diploma was a mathematical model of a nuclear reactor cooling system. where she worked for half a year as a research scientist before going on maternity leave. when she took on a job, in January 1994, as a salesperson for a computer accessories and software firm with a 50 dollar monthly salary. The job was based in a newly opened store in the KAMI Information Technologies Center

In September 1994, Natalya became head of a distribution department of AntiViral Toolkit Pro (AVP), which had been under development by Eugene Kaspersky's team since 1991. Revenue was divided between the team and the mother company until 1997, when the future founders of 'Kaspersky Lab' decided to start their own business. In 1997, Kaspersky Lab sales started to double yearly, with turnover reaching around $7 million in 2001 and exceeding $67 million in 2006. In August 2007, Natalya was unseated and suspended from her key management functions by Eugene Kaspersky due to the couple's divorce and the deepening ideological divide between the two. with Kaspersky Lab buying out Natalya's stake in the company in 2007 and 2011 (around 30% of shares in 2007). After the change in management, the company's rate of growth dropped visibly, with global revenue growing by 40% in 2009, 13.7% in 2011, 3% in 2012, and 6% in 2013. During 2001–2002, 'Kaspersky Lab' programmers developed a solution which later became known as InfoWatch Traffic Monitor Enterprise and which offers protection for corporate users against internal threats (a DLP system). In December 2013, a subsidiary called 'InfoWatch' was established to develop and distribute new software. Natalya Kasperskaya has been CEO and majority owner of 'InfoWatch' since October 2007, with her stake in the company being linked to the business separation deal with her ex husband. 'InfoWatch' software had only vague prospects at the time of the spin off and was an albatross around 'Kaspersky Lab's neck. According to 'Forbes', InfoWatch annual revenue reached around $12 million in 2015, Among longstanding clients are Russian governmental organizations, as well as 'Sberbank', 'Beeline', 'Lukoil', 'Tatneft', 'Surgutneftegas', 'Sukhoi', 'Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works', etc. In addition, InfoWatch is actively developing the German, Middle East, and South East Asian markets. Finally, in August of the same year, women's magazine 'Cosmopolitan' published an estimate of $270 million.

Natalya Kasperskaya is a member of the board of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs and the Association of Software Developers 'Domestic Software'. She is also a member of the Expert Russian Software Council affiliated to the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications of Russia, the Grant Committee of Skolkovo Foundation, and the supervisory board of the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech). Furthermore, Natalya Kasperskaya is a member of the Russian Mechanical Engineering Union. From April 2008 until March 2012, Natalya was a member of the board of the Russian German chamber of commerce. In addition, from 2009 until 2011, she was head of the working party on information and computer technologies under the federal target program of the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia, referred to as “Research and inventions in priority scientific and technology development areas in Russia in 2014—2020”.

Natalya Kasperskaya has enjoyed participating in social activities ever since being at school, where she remembers singing in a children's choir, taking part in school performances and concerts, and even leading a pioneer's team of agitators. In addition, she formed her own school placard newspaper, for which she wrote poetry, and was also interested in sports like basketball, skiing and swimming, as well as phaleristics, collecting stamps and Soviet coins. Kasperskaya admits that she has little interest in cooking, although she had to cook for her family during maternity leave. and divorced in 1998,

In 2005, Igor and Natalya had a daughter, Alexandra, who was followed by a second daughter, Maria, in 2009 and a third daughter, Varvara, in 2012. Natalya's sons from her first marriage both studied at Lomonosov Moscow State University, with Maxim graduating from the faculty of Geography and Ivan from the faculty of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics.