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 organization 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 minimization, 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 organization 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 organize 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 standardization 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 organizations. 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.