'Internet of Threats': Q&A with Eugene Kaspersky - USA Today

USA Today, By Kim Hjelmgaard

Eugene Kaspersky is the Russian-born founder and chief executive of Kaspersky Lab, the world's largest private cybersecurity company. Kaspersky, 49, started the company in 1997. It is headquartered in Moscow, but has offices in 30 countries around the world and is active in more than 200. What follows is an edited version of an interview with Kaspersky conducted at Dublin's Web Summit.

Q. Where is the next great Internet or digital threat going to come from?

A. We expect to see growth in the number of and sophistication of new criminal attacks, including on large companies, particularly on banks and other financial institutions. We are seeing growth in attacks on industrial systems coming from traditional, offline organized crime — from the mafia, essentially.

The Internet of things is the Internet of threats for us. We expect attacks on smart TVs, watches, smart glasses. As the number of connected smart devices expands fast, more and more of them will be targeted to obtain criminal profit.

Cyber-crime speaks native English, broken English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese and many other languages. And this number of languages is growing as well. Cyber-crime is very globalized I'm afraid. Read more.