Kaspersky Lab CEO suggests replacing cybersecurity with 'cyber-immunity'

The present-day protection of information systems requires an absolutely new approach, considering the rapid growth of malware and other emerging challenges in cybersecurity, said Eugene Kaspersky, the CEO and founder of Russian antivirus software provider Kaspersky Lab.

"The industry develops and changes every year. Today we are facing challenges that we could not even imagine some five or seven years ago. The amount of malware grows exponentially, at present we collect over 380,000 unique types of malware files every day," Kaspersky told TASS on the sidelines of the 5th World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, China.

Kaspersky earlier said 120 such attacks per day were registered in 1997 and 14,500 in 2008.

According to the expert, the world has entered a new round of industrial revolution, as the rapidly expanding ‘internet of things’ market causes changes in every sector of the global economy, including industry, urban infrastructure, trade and transport.

"The scope and complexity of threats is on the rise in the industrial sphere, where every enterprise and every automated production system requires a targeted and individual approach," he continued. "I think that the protection of all those spheres will be the focus of our attention in the coming years."

In one of his reports at the conference, Kaspersky noted that the current cybersecurity situation requires a drastically different approach - a transition from "cybersecurity" to "cyber-immunity," which implies that the cost of a cyberattack should exceed the cost of damage that it can inflict.

"I see only one possible way of reaching such an effect. We need to drastically change our approach to the protection of information systems, integrating cybersecurity within the system architecture instead of making it an add-in, as is the case now. We have already managed to use this principle to protect products of the internet of things. We will keep developing and expanding it," he said.

The Fifth World Internet Conference is being held in the Chinese city of Wuzhen between November 7 and 9. It is headlined "Creating a digital world for mutual trust and collective governance - toward a community with a shared future in cyberspace." This large-scale event is held annually since 2014 to bring together heads of national cybersecurity agencies, leading experts, representatives of international organizations, research centers and top management of leading digital sector companies all over the world.