http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/07/sports/autoracing/computing-a-winning-formula-at-the-pinnacle-of-racing.html 2014-11-07 06:53:19 Computing a Winning Formula at the Pinnacle of Racing Eugene Kaspersky’s global computer security company, Kaspersky Lab, is a major sponsor of the Ferrari Formula One team. === Eugene Kaspersky, 49, is co-founder, chairman and chief executive of Kaspersky Lab, one of the world’s leading providers of antivirus technology for computers. Kaspersky, who was born in Novorossiysk, Russia, graduated in 1987 from the Russian Institute of Cryptography, Telecommunications and Computer Science with a degree in computer technology and mathematical engineering. In 1989, while working for the Soviet military as a cryptographer, he discovered a virus in his computer and began to study and treat it. He did the same for another colleague who had found a virus in his computer. By 1991, Kaspersky had moved to a private company, where he and his colleagues developed a program called AntiViral Toolkit Pro. That was the prototype for what became the Kaspersky Anti-Virus, now sold by Kaspersky Lab, the company that he founded in 1997. Based in Moscow, the company now has 30 regional offices and works in nearly 200 countries. The company became a sponsor in Q. How do you find time to be a Formula One fan and what attracts you to the series? A. Q. What inspired the Kaspersky Lab sponsorship with Ferrari? A. We have some unusual marketing projects and activities. We were sponsoring Jackie Chan in Asia and had commercials with him, and we had a concert. There was a rock concert at the Olympic stadium in Beijing, with about 70,000 people, and it was full of our ads so it was very good promotion. We also sponsored a female skiing expedition to the South Pole. That was the reason I came to the South Pole. Formula One was a place we were looking at, but we knew zero about being inside Formula One. Thanks to Richard Branson, who started the Virgin team, he called us, asking about partnerships. So we came to the Virgin team, but it was too expensive. To be honest, we are not such a big company to spend such a budget to sponsor sports events; so that was not our size. So we came in and we decided to look around. I felt the smell, the noise, I saw the spectators, and I said it’s great. At the same time, one of my ways is ‘business and fun.’ Ferrari at the Grand Prix is a business because we have partners, and we have a competition for the partners. The best get a ticket to the Grand Prix: Formula One, Ferrari, VIP lunch. We do it all the time in many, many nations for our business partners who distribute our products, and we say that the best of you will go to Formula One. And the Formula One paddock is a great place to meet many interesting people. So it is business and at the same time it is a lot of fun. I call it ‘business and fun.’ Q. Speaking of business, you don’t do that much virus research yourself anymore, do you? A. Q. This all came from an interest in mathematics? A. And my computer got a computer virus. It was 1989, and I found my computer was infected. That was the turning point, and after that I started my collection of computer viruses. It was my hobby to collect computer viruses — to collect them, to analyze them, to understand the logic, to understand the algorithms. Q. You have started warning about the future of virus attacks on the so-called Internet of Things, which involves many of our everyday household objects. A. Thinking about the new devices, like smart TV, I think the next victim of the attacks is smart TV. You are watching the TV, the TV is watching you, and then the blackmail: pay money. They hijack computers, they encrypt the data in the computers and they send a message: Send SMS to the paid number to receive the activation code, it will get the system back to you. Smartphones are the same. They block the smartphone and there is a message: ‘Pay money to unblock it.’ Q. You once said, ‘I own a company, a flat in Moscow and a BMW — I don’t need any more.’ Is that still accurate? A.