E-Business
Kaspersky Reinforces Commitment to Sustainability and Social Responsibility in First ESG Report
In its first Sustainability (ESG) report, Kaspersky revealed projects and initiatives implemented to reduce its carbon footprint, narrow the gender gap, and continue to educate the public about the basics of cybersecurity.
The report, released in accordance with the GRI and SASB international standards, focuses on the results of the company’s sustainable development for 2021 and the first six months of 2022.
Building a safe and sustainable digital world has been Kaspersky’s main goal for a quarter of a century. At the same time, the company has been focused on creating positive long-term change by continuously implementing socially significant activities to ensure that a safer tomorrow is more sustainable too.
The company’s Sustainability report is grounded on five key areas of sustainable development: safer cyberworld, ethics and transparency, future tech, people empowerment, and safer planet.
“Implementing a sustainability strategy is an integral step for us as a company that strives to make the world better. Kaspersky sees the fulfillment of its mission first of all in making the digital space more resilient to threats by building Cyber Immunity.
However, being a global socially responsible company, we cannot ignore a need to tackle challenges, which include reducing our carbon footprint, tackling the lack of cybersecurity basics and cyber-hygiene, narrowing the gender gap and leading transparency in cybersecurity.
We believe that business’ contribution to building a sustainable agenda is essential, and only by uniting efforts we can ensure a better tomorrow for future generations,” commented Maria Losyukova, Head of Sustainability.
Reducing the negative impact on the environment
Kaspersky supports the industry’s trend on continuous adoption of Electronic Software Distribution (ESD): the company has halved its production of tangible products and has been driving digital sales, which has a lower impact on the environment.
In addition, by implementing a more conscious business trip organisation process and decreasing their overall number, the amount of air emissions was reduced by 81% between 2019 and 2021.
Moreover, the company maintains energy savings of its data centers and uses only modern power consumption and power supply technologies in its equipment. Kaspersky also has a number of internal initiatives in different business units focused on developing a more responsible approach to environmental issues.
These include holding educational activities about carbon footprint minimisation, switching to more sustainable marketing materials, setting up more eco-effective office infrastructure, and recycling activities for employees aimed at gathering waste fractions that are not subject to household processing.
Taking care of the employees and nurturing new talents
People are the most valuable asset of the company, which is why Kaspersky does everything possible for the team to thrive.
In 2022, the Employee Net Promoter Score® (eNPS) that measures employee satisfaction within the organisation has increased and amounted to 53% in total.
During the reporting period, the company has constantly been expanding its portfolio of internal courses for employees, offering more than 100 professional development courses. Over 40% of employees have already taken up this opportunity by taking at least one course.
Moreover, Kaspersky has a highly diversified corporate volunteer program, which enables its employees to engage in socially responsible activities, including fundraising, pro bono work, blood donations, and sports activities.
In addition, the company continued to work on promoting a diverse workforce and reducing the gender imbalance: 26% of the company’s employees are women, of which 17% work in R&D.
This lines up with the employment distribution in the rest of the industry. The company’s goal is to further inspire women to pursue careers in IT.
Furthermore, Kaspersky is investing in nurturing new talent by maintaining the development of the company’s educational division, Kaspersky.Academy, which has over 100 partner universities around the globe.
It is also continuing to organise the Secur’IT Cup, a student competition of cybersecurity projects in which more than 6,000 students from all over the world have participated since 2018.
Maintaining users’ trust
Ensuring maximum transparency with regards to products, internal and business processes is a vital element in digital security.
Kaspersky has been following a comprehensive approach to user data privacy, consisting of employee training and standardisation of data handling in each country where its users are present.
Every year since 2019, the company has certified its data management systems to the ISO/IEC 27001 international standard, confirming their high level of protection.
Moreover, Kaspersky continued to make additional efforts within the Global Transparency Initiative, and opened three more Transparency centers in the reporting period. There customers can review the company’s source code.
Kaspersky also relocated cyberthreat related data-processing for users in APAC, Latin America and the Middle East to Switzerland. Overall, the company has invested $5.6 million since 2018 in building a data infrastructure in Switzerland.
Keeping up the fight for secure tomorrow
Kaspersky has been continuously contributing to the global fight against cybercrime by cooperating with international law enforcement agencies and intergovernmental organisations.
During the reporting period, Kaspersky participated in around 30 joint cybersecurity events with stakeholders all over the world, and helped to disrupt a high-profile cybercriminal gang by sharing threat intelligence information and technical expertise.
Kaspersky has also been working to educate and protect those in need constantly, developing special courses such as TRAPEZE, an educational course aimed at teaching the older generation, and DeStalk for female victims of domestic violence, supported by the European Commission.
Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC) has launched an investigation into allegations that the confidentiality and integrity of candidates’ personal data may have been compromised by hackers.
The Commission initiated the inquiry following concerns over possible data breaches during examinations.
Preliminary findings indicate that several examination centres may not have implemented adequate technical and organizational measures to safeguard candidates’ personal information, as required under data protection regulations.
Although the incident reportedly affected 379, 997 candidates, the NDPC’s investigation is poised to cover a systemic audit of data processing and third parties.
It will be recalled that JAMB recently admitted that a technical error on its platform affected a total of 379,997 candidates in 157 examination centres across Lagos and the South-East.
Further investigation led to the arrest of at least 20 suspects who are currently in the custody of the Department of State Services and the Nigerian Police Force.
Cyber security firm, Kaspersky, has once again warned that sophisticated cybercriminals increasingly target Africa as ransomware and advanced persistent threats (APTs) escalate across the region.
Speaking at the company’s annual Cyber Security Weekend for the Middle East, Turkiye and Africa (META) region, the cybersecurity firm’s Global Research and Analysis Team highlighted growing digital threats affecting African nations.
Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa emerged as hotspots, with Kenya recording one of the highest web threat incident rates at 20.1% in first quarter 2025.
“While ransomware is less prevalent in Africa due to lower levels of digitisation and economic constraints, countries like South Africa and Nigeria are seeing a sharp rise in attacks,” said Sergey Lozhkin, head of META and APAC regions at Kaspersky.
Kaspersky noted a 0.01 percentage point increase in African ransomware cases year-on-year, reaching 0.41%, still below global and Middle Eastern averages, but a troubling sign for the continent’s emerging digital infrastructure.
Experts warned that attackers are refining their tactics, shifting focus to unconventional entry points like IoT devices, smart appliances, and misconfigured hardware.
“As these economies expand digitally, sectors such as manufacturing, finance and government are becoming key targets,” said Lozhkin
The cyber-crime landscape is evolving quickly, fuelled by AI tools and dark web access to large language models, which enable less skilled actors to launch convincing phishing and malware campaigns.
Groups like FunkSec, which uses AI-generated code and a low-cost ransom model, are redefining ransomware operations.
“African organisations face the dual challenge of expanding digital footprints and limited cybersecurity awareness. This makes layered defense strategies, including network segmentation, real-time monitoring and regular staff training, essential,” stated Lozhkin
Kaspersky continues to monitor 25 active APT groups in the META region, including SideWinder and MuddyWater, some of which are known to target African institutions.
To bolster defenses, the firm recommends using tools such as its free Anti-Ransomware Tool for Business and the Kaspersky Next suite for threat visibility and response.
Nigeria recently launched a new joint case team to step up its response to cybercrimes that affect people and businesses at home and abroad.
The ‘Joint Case Team on Cybercrime’ brings together Nigeria’s key justice and security agencies to work as one, making it easier to detect, investigate, and prosecute digital offences.
It is supported by the UK National Crime Agency, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, and the Commonwealth Secretariat, as part of a wider effort to promote international cooperation on cybercrime.
Speaking at the launch in Abuja, Prince Lateef Fagbemi SAN, minister of justice and attorney general of the federation described the initiative as “a bold and transformative stride in Nigeria’s justice system.”
He said that although Nigeria has a national legal framework to address cyber offences, laws alone are not enough.
Nigeria is among the countries most affected by cybercrime around the world, with increasing financial losses.
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