Kaspersky Lab will open a new office in central London in October 2013, which will serve as a European hub for employees and customers. The new office, close to Paddington station, will provide space for more than 100 Kaspersky Lab UK employees, as well as UK-based European and global functions.
“UK growth and increased presence is a key focus for the business. The move to make the UK operation more prominent is testament to the importance the company places on the UK and European markets,” said Alexander Moiseev, Managing Director of Kaspersky Lab Europe.
UK managing director, Malcolm Tuck, will move to a new European role as Director of Strategic Alliances, reporting to European managing director, Alexander Moiseev.
Kirill Slavin will join the UK as managing director. Prior to joining Kaspersky Lab, Kirill held several senior global positions in large organisations including PepsiCo Inc., Deloitte & Touche, and Rinaco Plus.
Moiseev added: “Kirill brings to the company over twenty years of experience in strategy, finance and operations from globally renowned organisations, and I am confident he will be able translate these into further success for the UK business. A flagship office in the thick of the business centre of London, together with these new appointments, will bring us closer to our customers, and our goals.”
The scheduled date for the opening of the office is mid-October 2013 when the company will start to gradually move from its current premises to maintain business continuity. It is planned that the UK sales and marketing teams will be the first to move, followed by other teams and functions over the next two years.
Moiseev said: “Over the course of the two-year relocation period, we will fully support our employees through the adjustment and are confident that at the same time, current business will remain unaffected. We are confident that having UK, European and global functions in one dynamic new office will aid synergy and integration across the business, resulting in an all-round better customer experience.”
McAfee has meanwhile announced that it has opened its first Cyber Defence Centre (CDC) in Dubai to offer incident response support, assessments and security education to customers across the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region.
The launch of the CDC, McAfee’s first worldwide, has come at the right time for the region according to the IT security firm, as businesses have witnessed numerous newsworthy attacks during the past year, and it is expected that the CDC will be an additional tool to help protect EMEA from emerging threats as they manifest. The governments in the region have been investing in new solutions to prevent and minimise the impact of attacks.
The constantly evolving threat landscape has driven demand for security services according to McAfee. The centre will provide Emergency Incident Response and Forensics services (supported by the new McAfee forensics lab based in Dubai), and strategic services including: Contextual Threat Intelligence, Open Source Intelligence Investigations, DDos Defence Assessments, Digital Forensics and Targeted Malware Threat Analysis.
“McAfee’s elite presence in the region enables customers to have a connected approach to cyber security,” said Ayman Al-Issa, digital oilfields cyber security advisor. “The local, on-the-ground presence provided by the CDC will make it easier for all entities to take advantage of McAfee’s expertise and also reduce response time in the event of a crisis of any kind. McAfee once again shows leadership and solution differentiation with the opening of this new centre.”
“The rising frequency of outages due to hacktivist, criminal and terrorist activities has brought the security issue front of mind,” said Gert-Jan Schenk, president, McAfee EMEA. “Organisations must be able to deal with these attacks to minimise their impact. It is here the CDC can play an invaluable role when a crisis occurs by providing expert, experienced support through leveraging the McAfee ecosystem: Support, Labs, and Professional Services.”
Over the last year, a increase has been detected in malware and attacks targeted at EMEA the firm adds. As an example, Ukraine and Belarus both experienced an increase in spam of more than 200 per cent in Q2 2013. In the Middle East, the CDC is monitoring a family of financial-data-stealing malware, which is active in countries like KSA, UAE and Qatar. Many of the breaches that were investigated over the past months started with attackers executing a SQL-injection into clients’ websites and databases to enter further into the network. More and more activity is monitored as well with regards to hacking groups that are targeting industries, governments or other hacker-groups for different motives: financial gain, hacktivism or stealing intellectual property.
