On June 8, 2023, Kaspersky held a media conference in Beijing to share its views on the possible changes in the threat landscape of the security industry in 2023, and explained and outlook Kaspersky's business development in recent years.
Kaspersky Greater China General Manager Zheng Qiliang
"In the first half of this year, Kaspersky's business growth in the Chinese market has exceeded last year's growth rate by more than 20% year-on-year, and after the pandemic, everything seems to be back to normal. In the future, Kaspersky will continue to invest in the Chinese market. In the field of high-end security technology, dealing with sophisticated APT attacks and cyber threats is Kaspersky's strength. Given the current situation where cybersecurity incidents such as data breaches and ransomware attacks have paralyzed many businesses, Kaspersky is doing its best to help companies meet challenges beyond their control to address the evolving threat landscape and secure a more advanced and digital future, said Zheng Qiliang, General Manager of Kaspersky Greater China.
Since 2012, Kaspersky has focused its business on Enterprise products, from small and medium-sized business customers to large enterprises and government customers. Since 2013, Kaspersky's Enterprise Market (B2B) business has grown rapidly, accounting for more than 80% of the business. In 2022, more than 50% of Kaspersky's overall business will come from the contribution of the large customer market, and the other 30% will come from SMB business, while the largest B2C business in the early days now accounts for only a small part due to the free domestic stand-alone market.
"In recent years, Kaspersky has maintained a business growth rate of about 20%-30% per year, of which 60% of its revenue comes from the contribution of large customer markets." He said.
Supporting information creation is an important mission of Kaspersky
"At every stage of the market, we face different challenges." Zheng Qiliang said that at present, Kaspersky is facing one of the biggest challenges, but also the biggest opportunity, that is, at the historical moment of promoting information innovation in China, in addition to doing a good job in the existing business, it is also necessary to strive to enter the circle of information creation.
"Kaspersky fully understands and supports the government's demands, strives to actively pass the domestic information and security tests, and then vigorously supports domestic users. This is currently Kaspersky's most important mission in China. Zheng Qiliang said.
Referring to the market target for 2023, Zheng Qiliang said that through his efforts, Kaspersky Greater China will strive to achieve more than 50% growth in OEM business, more than 35% growth in the large customer market, and 10%-15% growth in the SMB market. "Although the B2C stand-alone business is relatively small, Kaspersky has maintained a growth performance of 10%-15% every year, you know, Kaspersky may be the only security brand that can realize the charging of stand-alone business." He said.
2023 is likely to see an even more complex security landscape
Jin Ye, Senior Security Researcher at Kaspersky Security, presented Kaspersky's outlook for Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) and defined the changes in the threat landscape that will emerge in 2023. Forecasts for the year ahead include attacks on satellite technology, mail servers, an increase in destructive attacks and data breaches, hacking attacks against drones, and the next large-scale cyberespionage attack.
Jin Ye, Senior Security Researcher at Kaspersky Security
According to statistics, large-scale and high-impact online epidemics usually occur once every 6 to 7 years. The last such incident was the infamous WannaCry ransomware worm, which exploited the extremely powerful EternalBlue vulnerability to automatically spread to vulnerable computers. Kaspersky researchers believe that the next "WannaCry" similar event has a high probability of happening around 2023.
"It is clear that 2022 has seen significant changes in the world geopolitical order and ushered in a new era of instability. Some of our predictions focus on how this instability will translate into nefarious cyber activity, while others reflect our views on what new attack vectors attackers will explore. Better preparation means better resilience, and we hope our assessment of the future will enable defenders to harden their systems and more effectively defend against cyberattacks. Jin Ye said.
The irregular use of AI can pose great risks to humans
With the growing popularity of ChatGPT. At present, almost everyone is using and testing ChatGPT-related AI models in various ways. In the process, it may pose certain security risks.
First, the most important risk is probably information leakage. Many companies and individuals are trying to input some of their data and materials onto the Internet, ignoring the information leakage brought by this move. Thankfully, many professional companies have begun to block Internet services in this area to avoid the risk of information leakage.
Second, if humans use the answers provided by large AI models such as ChatGPT directly as a basis for decision-making, it may also lead to great risks. At present, in many tests, ChatGPT will also make mistakes in some very simple calculations, and even make up some reference materials, once humans abuse such results may bring potential risks to themselves.
However, Zheng Qiliang also said that everything has two sides of the same coin, and if it is properly controlled, AI is indeed a good tool. Kaspersky has begun to use AI technology to help it complete its network security defense and analysis in the past decade or so, and its application is very mature.
Currently, more than 90% of attacks in Kaspersky are handled by AI.
In specific general business, Kaspersky engineers have also tried to use ChatGPT to help generate reports for virus detection, which has indeed saved a lot of labor costs.
At the same time, in the analysis of threat attacks, a large type of work is to compare data, compare what kind of organization has done what behavior, these tasks are likely to allow AI to effectively share a part.
In Zheng's view, Kaspersky will not only pay attention to the development of the entire AI industry and use AI applications to help complete more automated work, but also pay attention to whether AI will bring some unforeseen threats.
"ChatGPT is a good thing, but humans have to use it well, or use it carefully. Humans need to learn to defeat magic with magic. Jin Ye said.
"It's important to get AI in the right direction, and when managed properly, it can really help us optimize our workflows and increase productivity." But once AI gets out of hand, it's a different world. None of us want to see human conflict come from AI miscalculation, which is entirely possible, and there are already many scholars and prophets talking about it. Zheng Qiliang said.
Kaspersky has paid attention to the security risks that AI may cause. Zheng Qiliang said, "We can think differently, for example, Kaspersky has made anti-drone solutions a very important topic this year, it seems to have nothing to do with the virus, but when we find that the drone is acting abnormally, we will specifically understand what kind of dangerous purpose it is based on, and even finally choose whether to shoot it down." ”
The idea of "anti-drone" may be the same as AI safety. Zheng Qiliang believes that "if it is found that inappropriate AI use may cause it to produce some 'specific bad purposes', it may be necessary to judge its abnormal behavior like a drone and deal with it, and we ultimately hope that the correct use of AI can improve our human life." ”