Natalya Kasperskaya's husband. Natalya Kasperskaya is a mother, wife, businesswoman. "The driving force" of Russia according to the Financial Times

Natalia Kasperskaya is one of the most famous businesswomen in the world. As a child, she could not even imagine that she would reach such heights in life.

Kaspersky's wife has always been among the average

Natalya was born into an ordinary Soviet family, this happened in 1966. At that time, she was considered a late child, because her father was already 46, and her mother was 30 years old. The girl studied at a simple school, led an active lifestyle, participated in sports competitions, and led school concerts. When the question of a future career arose, the parents transferred their daughter in advance to the physics and mathematics school at the Moscow Aviation Institute, after which Natalya Kasperskaya quickly entered the Moscow Institute of Electronic Engineering (MIEM) at the Faculty of Applied Mathematics. The girl tried to study diligently in order to earn a scholarship, but even then Natalya felt that dry mathematics was absolutely not what she wanted to do in life.

Natalya Kasperskaya owes her career to her husband

They met at the Holiday Home. They dated for a long time, and when the girl was 20 years old, the young people decided to get married. While still in her 5th year at the institute, Natalya gave birth to her first son, Maxim, but thanks to the help of her mother and grandmother, she did not devote herself entirely to raising the baby, but decided to finish her studies. The girl was assigned to the Central Research and Design Bureau, where she worked with microcircuits. This activity did not attract Natalia at all, so after giving birth to her second child, she happily went on maternity leave. After staying at home for six years, Natalya began to look for any opportunity to break out of four walls and came to work with her husband at the KAMI Scientific and Technical Center. At that time, Evgeny Kaspersky had already managed to make a name for himself by developing practically the first anti-virus program in Russia. Natalya first sold computer equipment, and then began to delve more and more into software products. After a while, it was she who officially patented her husband’s development, and in professional circles they began to talk more and more about the AVP antivirus. At first it was difficult, because this field of activity was new not only for Natalya, but also for the world of computer technology in Russia in general. Over time, Kaspersky’s wife realized that her strong point in life was sales.

In 1997, KAMI disbanded, and several leading programmers, including Evgeniy Kaspersky and his wife, decided to create their own laboratory, of which Natalya became the general director. This is how her career began to take off. Talking about her success, Natalya Kasperskaya emphasizes that in order to achieve any heights, you don’t have to wait for gifts from fate, because in everything you need to rely only on your own strength. You should never be afraid to take risks, go ahead, be cunning and dodge somewhere. This is the only way to build a career. Having been a rather reserved child in childhood, today this woman negotiates with the whole world. But once upon a time she was afraid to even think that she needed to offer her services herself, and also write to potential clients in a foreign language.

Natalya Kasperskaya is a happy mother and wife

The famous Kaspersky union lasted until 1998, after which the couple divorced. Natalya did not leave her business; on the contrary, she continues to work in the field of computer technology, promoting her ex-husband’s projects. Three years later, Natalya remarried to no less famous person- Igor Ashmanov. From him the woman had two more children - girls. Perhaps, having a marriage behind you with a business person, ex-wife Kaspersky tries to draw the line between family and career as clearly as possible. Natalya does not interfere in her husband’s affairs, and he does not interfere with his wife’s career. The couple tries to spend a lot of time together and relax as a family. Today Natalya has more opportunity and time to take care of children. In them she sees the meaning of her life. In general, according to Natalya, a woman should not initially put the goal of building a career first, because when you are already over forty and you suddenly remember about children, then, firstly, it will be too late, and secondly, it will be too late for you. you don’t want to change anything in your established life. Work is something that comes, because today you work in one company, and tomorrow you find yourself among the unemployed. This is a big blow for a career woman, because it seems that life is over. But if you come home and see happy children’s faces, then all problems are solved by themselves, because it is only for the sake of children that we make any plans for the future and try to achieve more.

FULL NAME: Kasperskaya Natalya Ivanovna
Date of Birth: February 5, 1966, Moscow
Position held: Russian entrepreneur in the field information technologies, CEO of the InfoWatch group of companies, co-founder of Kaspersky Lab

"Biography"

Natalya Kasperskaya (nee Shtutser) was born in Moscow on February 5, 1966 into a family of engineers, employees of “closed” defense research institutes. She was elected as a member of the school's Pioneer squad council, and later as a member of the district Pioneer headquarters. During the Komsomol years - Komsomol organizer. In parallel with her main studies, she played basketball for five years in a children's and youth school. sports school(Youth Sports School). I seriously intended to become veterinarian, however, she abandoned this dream due to problems with studying chemistry. In the eighth grade, her parents transferred her from a regular general education school to a school with a physics and mathematics focus at the Moscow Aviation Institute (MAI). Upon completion, she passed the entrance exams to Moscow State University(MSU) named after M.V. Lomonosov, but did not enter, missing half a point in the competition. Later, with the same grades, she entered the Moscow Institute of Electronic Engineering (MIEM).

Education

From 1984 to 1989 - student at the Faculty of Applied Mathematics, MIEM. Her theme thesis- “Mathematical model of the cooling system nuclear reactor" He also holds a Bachelor of Business degree from the UK Open University.

Career

According to the distribution after the institute, Natalya Kasperskaya worked for six months research fellow at the Central Research and Design Bureau (TsNKB) in Moscow and went on maternity leave for the birth of her second child. Natalya began to build her career in the field of information technology only at the age of 28, getting a part-time job in January 1994 with a salary of $50 a month as a seller of accessories and software to the newly opened store of the Scientific and Technical Center (STC) KAMI - a company created by a former teacher of her then husband Evgeniy Kaspersky from the Higher School of the KGB of the USSR.

Kaspersky Lab.

Since September 1994, Natalia headed the antivirus distribution department AntiViral Toolkit Pro(AVP), which the development team of Evgeny Kaspersky has been working on since 1991. In two or three years, she managed to establish the main distribution channels for the product, technical support, and enter foreign markets. The department's initial sales ($100–200 per month in 1994) began to grow rapidly. A year later, their volume exceeded $130 thousand, in 1996 it amounted to more than $600 thousand, and a year later - more than $1 million. Income was divided in half between the team and the head structure. By 1997, future founders Kaspersky Lab.(“Kaspersky Lab”) it became clear that it was necessary to spin out into a separate business.

Natalya Kasperskaya in June 1997 initiated the emergence of Kaspersky Lab., insisted on this name and worked as the general director of this company for more than 10 years. The initial distribution of shares in Kaspersky Lab was as follows: 50% belonged to Evgeniy, another 20% each belonged to his two fellow programmers Alexey De-Monderik and Vadim Bogdanov, Natalya’s share was 10%. Since 1997, Laboratory sales began to double annually. In 2001, the company's turnover was about $7 million, in 2006 - already over $67 million.

In August 2007, due to an earlier divorce and a deepening ideological split with Evgeniy Kaspersky, Natalya was removed from her post by him and removed from her main management functions, remaining the chairman of the created board of directors of Kaspersky Lab. Her final separation from the once common business occurred in 2011. During 2007-2011, Laboratory completely bought out Natalya’s share in this company (by 2007 it was about 30%).

Under the leadership of Natalia Kasperskaya Kaspersky Lab. has grown into one of the largest antivirus corporations with a network of regional offices around the world. At the time of the change of management, in 2007, the Laboratory’s revenue was $126 million. Its capitalization in 2011, when Natalya left the co-owners and left the company, was estimated at more than $1.3 billion, and its annual revenue was $700 million. After the change in management, the latter's growth rate decreased noticeably: in 2009, global revenue Kaspersky Lab. grew by 40%, in 2011 - by 13.7%, in 2012 - by 3%, in 2013 - by 6%.

InfoWatch

After Kaspersky Lab purchased the Antispam technology developed by Ashmanov and Partners, the head of this company, Igor Ashmanov, gave the buyers an idea: he proposed using the antispam engine in the opposite direction - to protect against leaks. During 2001-2002, Kaspersky Lab specialists developed a system that later became known under the brand InfoWatch Traffic Monitor Enterprise, - protection of corporate users from internal threats (DLP system). In December 2003, a subsidiary was founded to develop and distribute the new product InfoWatch. Since October 2007, Natalya Kasperskaya has been the CEO and owner of a controlling stake InfoWatch. This company was part of her share in the division of business with her former husband. Natalya Kasperskaya directed her main investments to InfoWatch, in joint companies with Igor Ashmanov “Kribrum” and “Nanosemantics”, as well as in the German antivirus company G Data Software AG. For the rapidly growing Kaspersky Lab, a by-product InfoWatch with unclear (at the time of separation) prospects was a burden. The technological solutions and product line of the new company, unlike the Laboratory, are initially aimed at large and medium-sized corporations (from 300 workstations), and not at small businesses and retail. This required fundamentally different skills and approaches, where Natalya’s previous management experience was not very applicable. However, already in 2012 the previously unprofitable company InfoWatch for the first time it entered the “plus” and continued to grow rapidly, by 60-70% per year. According to Forbes, revenue InfoWatch in 2014 amounted to 831 million, surveyed by Kommersant independent experts in the spring of 2015, this business was estimated at $40–50 million. Today InfoWatch has grown into a group of companies consisting of several subsidiaries, grouped in two areas - protecting corporations from internal threats and from targeted attacks from outside. It occupies about 50% of the Russian market for confidential data protection systems (DLP systems). Among its long-term clients are Russian government agencies, as well as Sberbank, Beeline, LUKoil, Tatneft, Surgutneftegaz, Sukhoi, Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works (MMK), etc., the company is actively promoting its business in Germany , in the Middle East, in the countries of South and South-East Asia. Current shareholders InfoWatch- Natalya Kasperskaya and deputy general director of the enterprise Rustem Khairetdinov.

Personal condition

The magazine “Finance” was the first to assess Natalya Kasperskaya’s personal wealth in 2010 - then, according to the editors of this business publication closed in July 2011, it amounted to $450 million. The publication caused public controversy: on the air of the Finam FM radio station, Kasperskaya denied the data provided , describing them as greatly overestimated, and questioned the adequacy of the calculation methodology. However, the following year Finance revised its estimate, increasing it to $462 million.

According to a business magazine Forbes, in March 2013, Kasperskaya’s fortune was $220 million. In 2014, he estimated it at $230 million, and in 2015 - at $270 million. In March 2015, Lenta.ru agreed with Forbes’ assessment of 2014 " In July 2015, a German magazine Der Spiegel published the result of his calculations - €207 million. In August of the same year, the version of the women's magazine became known Cosmopolitan- $270 million

As Spiegel writes, most of Natalia Kasperskaya’s personal fortune comes from the proceeds from the sale of assets. Kasperskaya itself in October 2015, in response to the question whether the results of Forbes calculations correspond to reality, indicated that the company it owned was non-public, with an a priori unknown capitalization, but “if InfoWatch evaluate it well, then the count is normal.”

Views

About entrepreneurship Natalya Kasperskaya calls the paradox of entrepreneurship a situation in which investments are most difficult to attract at the very beginning of a business, when they are urgently needed. The more successful a business develops, the more supportive investors become. Over time, they begin to run after the owners of such a business, but at this stage their money is no longer required - after all, in exchange, a potential investor will want a share in an established profitable business. With startups, the conversation is different: since the prospects are unclear, in exchange for financing, investors will demand control from their owners and begin to dictate what and how to do, which can ruin the business. Therefore, if a startuper has a choice, Natalya believes, it is better for him not to attract external investment at all. She is sure:
Get money for good conditions This is only possible if you prove that you don’t need the money. The more you need money, the worse the conditions will be. Kasperskaya, however, explains that for a pragmatic investor, when purchasing a startup, it is more logical to leave the team of its creators at the helm, rather than take additional risks by attracting third-party management at their own discretion. And for this, the creators need a powerful incentive, the best of which is a share in their own company. Natalya Kasperskaya recalls that having bought 100% of one of the startups at the stage of a shareholder conflict, she later gave two of its top managers a block of shares back so that they could continue to grow their business.
Natalya Kasperskaya considers three main features of an entrepreneur: the ability to sacrifice something, try new things only out of curiosity and at the same time have a penchant for making money - the latter distinguishes an entrepreneur from a stuntman. When investing, she advises focusing not on current market trends with exponential growth, but on areas in which you have good knowledge. Without this, it is impossible to take into account hidden circumstances that are discovered only from within a particular market and for which skills are required. Mastering these skills in any industry requires 5-6 years of work, therefore, according to Kasperskaya, even in a recession, it is more profitable to stay in “your” depressed industry rather than rush around. At the same time, however, you may miss the moment when the industry dies out for good. Natalya Kasperskaya assesses the role of the general director as obviously lonely: he has no one to consult with. Business partners do not always understand the specifics or may have their own interests, and their status does not allow discussing strategy with subordinates. However, the Internet removes unnecessary barriers if you spend time communicating with subordinates. As Natalya notes, not everyone will risk coming to the manager with their proposals in person, but on the Internet it is much easier to do this, so in the end there is more trust.
This, according to Kasperskaya, also has a downside. If in the mid-2000s the personnel department was alarmed if the interviewee had his own blog or account on social networks, by the mid-2010s they would be more likely to be alarmed by the job applicant’s statement that he had nothing of the kind. As Natalya notes, companies have begun to strive for comprehensive control over the actions of personnel. About Internet Security Kasperskaya believes that although “black lists” and blocking of prohibited sites are half-measures that need improvement, nothing better has yet been invented. However, filtering Internet content should, in her opinion, be used only fourth after prevention - systematic explanatory work with parents, teaching children with disabilities preschool age understanding the main Internet threats, as well as legislative activities and punishment of violators. At the Internet 2015 forum held in Moscow in December 2015, Natalya Kasperskaya outlined key proposals for tightening Internet regulation to the President of Russia, who, in return, noted that he shares this approach. According to Natalya, the use of personal data by any organization needs to be introduced into the legal framework and streamlined. This has not yet been done, despite the explosive growth in opportunities for collecting such data on citizens on the Internet, especially on social networks, for various manipulations. Kasperskaya is surprised that the use of big data is lobbied for in Internet marketing, but few people consider this topic from a security point of view. Meanwhile, collecting big data about users of various electronic devices and services is surveillance. In addition to the automatic collection, storage and analysis of data sets about the activity of citizens, their movements, preferences, connections with each other, purchases, negotiations, public and non-public records, photos and videos, etc., there are also ways to isolate total mass individual dossier, says Natalya Kasperskaya. If the selected object is, for example, an official who has access to state secrets, there is a threat national security, since all of the above data are at the disposal of American manufacturing companies and, as a result, the United States. But this is not the only risk, Kasperskaya warns. Dominating the global computer technology market, the United States is able to impose an embargo on the use of any of its devices and software products - there is, for example, the technical ability to remotely turn off Windows in Russia simultaneously on all computers, turn off all smartphones at once, stop technical support for any corporate systems, making it unavailable updating them and blocking them. Natalya recalls that similar cases have already happened - for example, when the introduced computer worm Stuxnet disabled Iran's nuclear industry.
According to Natalya Kasperskaya, malware may be located directly in the processor. In a similar way, a foreign manufacturer is able to organize infrastructure sabotage and targeted attacks, including those of a propaganda nature, which is a weapon in the information war in which Russia is engaged. As long as the United States remains a de facto monopolist in global sales of leading software and hardware, the rest of the world (and, in particular, Russia) will be forced to put up with the listed risks, which, according to Kasperskaya, are becoming unacceptable. About IT import substitution Natalya Kasperskaya believes that Russia needs to develop a national technology strategy and IT platform, its own independent chain of full-cycle solutions in the field of information technology, starting from the processor and ending with software. It is necessary to highlight priorities and understand what to replace first and second, to define the very concept of cybersecurity. She states that in the field of software (software), Russia’s position is already quite strong today - there is a large number of products that can replace foreign ones. The volume of IT exports from Russia in 2015, according to the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications, amounted to $7 billion (for comparison: the export of Russian weapons for the same year was about $15 billion). About 70 Russian companies work in the field of information security, that's enough. The main thing that the industry is sorely lacking, as Natalya believes, is not subsidizing developers, but stimulating demand. The most obvious way to create it is to oblige state-owned companies or companies with state participation to buy domestic goods. Kasperskaya realizes that, for example, replace with mass Windows computers in the coming years is unrealistic. However, if we consider specific areas - for example, a school tablet - this becomes possible. Already now there are both potential Russian developers of the corresponding software (for example, based on Linux systems) with support for most applications instead of Android from Google, as well as Chinese analogues of adequate quality in terms of hardware. If there is a government order, there will be no need for additional funding, Natalya believes. Natalia Kaperskaya does not share the idea of ​​limiting IT import substitution to software only: the same mobile devices represent, in fact, an inseparable symbiosis of hard & soft. In the field of hardware, Russia is still lagging behind (there is no element base, its own processor, the main functional units), but all this, except for the processor itself, has already been developed in China - and with software, according to Natalya Kasperskaya, it is just worse there than in Russia. Synergy between the two powers would ensure digital sovereignty for both. You will have to make your own processor and share it with the Chinese. About Russia Since its pioneering years, Kasperskaya has believed that it should protect home country, she was initially patriotic and is now confident that she will remain so in the future. In 1991, Natalya, like those around her, wanted to change society and during the days of the August Putsch she herself went to the barricades, but she is now ashamed of this episode of her life: she realized that she was on the wrong side.
Kasperskaya evaluates the 1990s in Russia as a window of opportunity, when “everything was simpler,” including starting your own business. At the same time, the abruptness of the changes at that time, the general instability of the country and the dangers caused by this, including the murders of entrepreneurs, led to people fearing for the future and leaving Russia. For herself, Kasperskaya excludes emigration: “Drop everything and run, hide in the bushes - where, to what country?” She feels her roots in Russia - parents and relatives, friends, business. However, from the point of view of entrepreneurship, Natalya Kasperskaya is uncomfortable confining herself only to her own country. Having organized significant part business abroad, she compares Russia to a small pond, while the rest of the world is like a sea. However, as of the mid-2010s, Kasperskaya estimates the volume of the Russian market for corporate information leak prevention systems (DLP systems) at $80 million, which is approximately a tenth of the global total. “Russia is an absolutely advanced power in this sense. In the field of DLP, we are absolutely ahead of the rest,” says Natalya. For example, in terms of the intensity of competition: if in the USA the market is divided by only five DLP providers, in Russia there are already seven.

Private life

Hobbies
Natalya Kasperskaya has enjoyed social activism since school. She recalls how she sang in a children's choir, took part in school plays, concerts and pioneer propaganda teams, drew wall newspapers and composed poems for them. In addition, she went in for sports - basketball, skiing, swimming, and also collected stamps, badges and Soviet coins.
During her student years, Natalya became interested in the theatrical life of Moscow, knew the repertoires of the main youth theaters of that time: Mossovet, Taganka, Sovremennik - and sometimes spent the night in queues for tickets to fashionable productions. In addition, she was influenced by the KSP movement; she herself often sang with a guitar in companies. Later came the interests of trampoline, skiing, traveling with friends and children, and reading professional literature. Natalya Kasperskaya names “From Good to Great” and “Built to Last” by American business consultant Jim Collins as her favorite books that influenced her worldview. She is fluent in English and German languages.
Kasperskaya admits that she does not know how and does not like to cook food, although she was forced to do this while on maternity leave. She does not understand clothing brands, does not remember them and does not waste time on shopping, including online shopping, but simply buys what she likes and fits well. Natalya has no reverence for brands, because she understands how these brands are built. She has a similarly negative attitude towards gadgets and social networks, because she understands that these are ways of spying on a person. But she is forced to use a donated Sony Xperia, and ensures her presence on social networks through a PR service; she herself rarely goes there.

Family

Natalya met her first husband, Evgeniy Kaspersky, in a holiday home in January 1987, when she was 20 years old. Six months after that they got married. In 1989, while in her fifth year at the institute, Natalya Kasperskaya gave birth to her first child, Maxim, and in 1991, her second son, Ivan. The married couple separated in 1997 and divorced in 1998 on Evgeniy’s initiative, but due to the overall rapidly growing business, they were forced to hide the fact of the divorce for a couple of years so as not to demotivate employees and the market. Igor Ashmanov, the future second husband, was introduced to Natalya in 1996 at the CeBIT IT exhibition in Hannover: the stands of their companies were next door. A year later, having met again at the same exhibition, they resumed their initially informal acquaintance, starting to actively communicate on professional themes. As Kasperskaya recalls, two or three years later, after her divorce from Evgeniy, they began dating, and in 2001 they got married. In 2005, Igor and Natalya had a daughter, Alexandra, in 2009 - Maria, in 2012 - Varvara. Kasperskaya's sons graduated from Moscow State University (MSU) named after M.V. Lomonosov: Maxim - Faculty of Geography, Ivan - Faculty of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics. Ex-husband - Kaspersky Evgeniy Valentinovich- Russian programmer, one of the world's leading experts in the field of information security. One of the founders, main owner and current head of Kaspersky Lab JSC, an international company developing IT security solutions with more than 30 regional offices and sales in 200 countries. Laureate of the State Prize in the field of science and technology for 2008. Characterized in the press as a “thunderstorm of computer crime”

"The driving force" of Russia according to the Financial Times

- (Blogger), - (Russian Representative to NATO), Vladislav Surkov- (Acting Head of the Russian Presidential Administration), Anton Nosik- (Journalist/blogger), Oleg Kashin- (Journalist), Evgenia Chirikova- (Leader of the movement “In Defense of the Khimki Forest”), Tatyana LokshinA- (Human rights activist), - ( Socialite), Valeria Gai- (Film director), Alexey Popogrebsky- (Film director), Vasily Barkhatov- (Theater director), Marat Gelman- (Gallerist), Arkady Volozh- (general director of Yandex), Sergey Belousov- (General Director of Parallels), Yuri Soloviev- (Deputy Chairman of the Board of VTB Bank), Evgeniy and Natalya Kaspersky- (co-owner of Kaspersky Lab company),

"Companies"

"InfoWatch", "Kaspersky Lab"

Kasperskaya Natalya Ivanovna is mentioned in the press:

Kasperskaya: You can’t talk about cybersecurity in the Russian Federation

The founder of Kaspersky Lab told us what problems Russia has in the field of information security.

Natalya Kasperskaya will open a center for monitoring information attacks in Innopolis

General Director of the company InfoWatch Natalya Kasperskaya announced the opening of a federal center for monitoring information attacks. It is expected that the organization will begin its activities in the next six months in Innopolis.

Elena Baturina retained first place in the ranking of the richest women in Russia

The top ten also included the founder of the Wildberries online store Tatyana Bakalchuk ($500 million, third place), member of the board of directors of the investment company Progress-Capital Olga Belyavtseva ($400 million, fourth position), owner of the Sodrugestvo group of companies Natalya Lutsenko (325 million, fifth place), board member of Andrei Guryev's charitable foundation Evgenia Guryeva ($260 million, seventh place), tennis player Maria Sharapova ($260 million, eighth place), CEO of InfoWatch Natalya Kasperskaya ($190 million, ninth place ), the main owner of Siberia and Globus airlines Natalia Fileva ($190 million, tenth place).

Natalya Kasperskaya spoke about the system for intercepting conversations in the office

General Director of InfoWatch Natalya Kasperskaya spoke about the principles of operation of the interception system telephone conversations in the office, Kommersant FM reports.
“What we do looks like this: these are some kind of virtual cells that are placed inside, it intercepts calls going through this virtual cell via white list. This means that the list is pre-set by the employer. And only those phones that are on this list will be analyzed accordingly,” she noted.

Three IT entrepreneurs included in the ranking of the richest women in Russia

Natalya Kasperskaya: “Yarovaya Law”? If it exists, that means everyone should follow it.

Changes in legislation were commented live on Pravda.Ru by Natalya Kasperskaya, president of the InfoWatch group of companies and co-founder of Kaspersky Lab.

Natalia Kasperskaya's company bought the German antivirus software manufacturer cynapspro

Natalia Kasperskaya's InfoWatch bought a controlling stake in the German antivirus software developer cynapspro. Now the companies intend to begin expansion into European markets. In the near future, InfoWatch and cynapspro will create a new joint brand for services aimed at small and medium-sized businesses.

Natalya Kasperskaya thanked the MUR and the FSB for saving her son

MOSCOW, April 25 RIA Novosti. Natalya Kasperskaya, the mother of Ivan Kaspersky, who was released from hostage the day before, thanked the participants in the operation to free her son on her Facebook profile. “MUR members need to erect a monument! helped a lot too. Thanks to everyone who supported us through this hard time!,” she wrote.

Natalya Kasperskaya: “We did not spare money to ransom our son”

The kidnappers turned out to be the unemployed Savelyev family from Moscow and two friends of their son. The young man was kept in a cold, windowless bathhouse, handcuffed, for five days. Due to the constant darkness, Ivan thought that he had spent only two days in captivity, and not five, as it actually was

Natalya Kasperskaya: “We will still do a private placement as the first step towards an IPO”

Interview. One of the most successful Russian businesswomen, who headed Kaspersky Lab until 2007, is now working on her own project. But he doesn’t leave his former employer unattended.

It is clarified that Kasperskaya resigned from the board of directors as a result of the re-election of its members. In addition to Evgeniy Kaspersky, the board still includes three company representatives: Buyakin, Stephen Orenberg and Alexey de Monderic, as well as John Bernstein from the General Atlantic investment fund. It was this company that acquired shares from Natalia Kasperskaya in January.

Natalya Kasperskaya: women are better where there is communication

The share of women among chief accountants is 93%, HR directors 70% and financial directors 48%, the document says. However, there are still very few women in positions such as CEO, chairman of the board of directors and president, company experts say. BBC Russian Service correspondent Mikhail Ternovykh talked about the difficulties of doing business for women in Russia with one of the most successful Russian businesswomen, one of the founders of Kaspersky Lab, Natalya Kasperskaya.

Natalya Kasperskaya gave birth to her fourth child

Natalya Kasperskaya, one of the most famous and authoritative IT ladies on the Russian market, CEO of Infowatch and wife of Igor Ashmanov, gave birth to her fourth child. The girl was named Maria.

Natalya Kasperskaya: “An entrepreneur is a person with a high level of aggression”

Natalya Kasperskaya heads the board of directors of Kaspersky Lab, manages the Nanosemantics and InfoWatch companies, and works as an investor with the startup Navystavka.ru. Having worked in the IT business for more than 10 years, she realized that the main thing is to establish contact between sellers and programmers. “If the situation gets out of control, I am always on the side of the programmers. The main work rests on them, they create the product,” she said at a meeting organized by the Club of Successful Businessmen

Natalya Kasperskaya: “InfoWatch technology is not exactly surveillance”

Last week it became known that the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Kaspersky Lab, Natalya Kasperskaya, headed InfoWatch, a subsidiary of LK, which produces software for protection against internal threats. At the same time, Kasperskaya is buying out 50% plus one share of InfoWatch, and a decision has been made to issue additional shares of the company in order to attract new investments. Former Infowatch CEO Evgeniy Preobrazhensky was fired, and several other LC employees left along with him.

Business lady Natalya Kasperskaya.

Perhaps Evgeny Kaspersky would have remained a talented, but little-known programmer, if not for his ex-wife Natalya. It was she who established the successful sale of her husband’s IT developments. And while the business began to flourish, the Kaspersky family fell apart. But Natalya and Evgeniy managed to maintain their relationship and are still co-owners of Kaspersky Lab.

She was born on February 5, 1966 in Moscow. As a child, Natalya loved animals and dreamed of becoming a veterinarian, but chemistry at school absolutely did not work out. But everything was fine with mathematics, and her parents - her mother, a design engineer, and her father, a candidate in physics and mathematics - predicted a great future for Natalya in the technical path. Even before entering the institute, Natalya proved herself to be a leader - she was engaged in active pioneering and social activities.

After listening to her parents, Kasperskaya entered the “Applied Mathematics” specialty at the Moscow Institute of Electronic Engineering. In 1989 she received her diploma. She subsequently obtained a bachelor's degree from the UK Open University, majoring in Business.

Before moving into sales and management, Natalya worked for several years at the Central Research and Design Bureau of Moscow as an ordinary researcher. While still a student, she met the talented programmer Evgeniy Kaspersky, and when in 1994 the opportunity arose to go to work at the Kami Scientific and Technical Center - the one where Evgeniy began his career - Kasperskaya took the opportunity. In “Kami” she took up an unusual activity for herself. At first, Natalya worked as a sales manager in the computer equipment department, but soon she was transferred to manage the anti-virus development department, where Evgeny Kaspersky worked on AVP.

By 1997 - when Kaspersky's anti-virus product began to be sold, and things at the Kami Research and Development Center had completely deteriorated - Natalya raised the question of separating and creating her own company. At first Evgeny Kaspersky grumbled and did not want any changes - they say it would only interfere with work on the project. But Natalya still persuaded her husband.

In 1997, the Kaspersky Lab company appeared. Evgeniy acted according to the principle of “the idea ... of the initiator” - he threw all organizational responsibility onto Kaspersky and returned to software development. At first, Natalya Kasperskaya had a hard time. But she did it. And in 1998, the hired technical, commercial and financial directors came to her aid.

In 1998, the family of Natalia and Evgeniy fell apart under the pressure of everyday squabbles. This did not appear to have affected the company. Until 2007, leadership and responsibility for Kaspersky Lab's market activity lay primarily on the shoulders of CEO Natalia Kasperskaya. In 2007, as a major shareholder, she was elected to the post of head of the board of directors, while Evgeniy took the place of general director.

In 2004, in parallel with her work at the Laboratory, Natalya began to develop another area of ​​activity - the development of data protection systems in corporate intranet networks (DLP systems). After 3 years, Kasperskaya took the post of CEO of the company she founded, InfoWatch, a developer and distributor of such systems. Today this company has enormous potential for expansion into Western markets. In Russia, InfoWatch became the first in its field.

In Russia, the successful work of Natalya Kasperskaya was noted in 2008. She was ranked 4th in the top 10 most successful businesswomen in the country. By this time, Natalya already had many awards from foreign IT publications. In the same year, Kasperskaya was elected a member of the Russian-German Chamber of Foreign Trade. By the way, in 2010 Natalya Kasperskaya received second place among the best top managers in the Russian IT industry.

In business, Natalia values ​​teamwork. As a leader, she knows how to listen to the opinions of experts before committing rash acts. At the same time, she does not accept all sorts of team building and other “nonsense” inspired from abroad. Working with Russian programmers requires a completely different approach, and Kasperskaya is aware of this. At the Laboratory, developers were never reprimanded for being late, but they had to complete their part of the job on time.

In her marriage to Evgeniy Kaspersky, Natalya became the mother of two children. After the divorce, she began to live with a prominent IT figure, Igor Ashmanov. By 2011, she became the mother of two more children. The last daughter was born, Masha, in March 2009. A month earlier, fans of Kaspersky Anti-Virus presented Natalya with a humorous list of possible names for a child, each of which was somehow related to the anti-virus field.

Natalya Kasperskaya knows two well foreign languages- German and English. He often goes to ski resorts on vacation and is interested in tourism and travel. Natalya plays the guitar well.

She is in no hurry - although her assistants plan her daily schedule literally minute by minute. He answers all questions simply - although in life and in business he solves problems of almost prohibitive complexity. Tall, with perfect posture, a calm smile and an even, deep voice, she involuntarily makes you want to imitate her - although you understand that copying here is most likely impossible.

Natalya Kasperskaya is the owner of the InfoWatch group of companies, co-founder of Kaspersky Lab, one of the richest women in Russia and the mother of five children. After college, not yet deciding on a career, she gave birth to two sons and started working part-time as a software saleswoman. Having felt the taste of entrepreneurship, it was she who saw the commercial potential in what her first husband, Evgeniy, was “sitting and coding,” and in 1997, she insisted on creating her own company. Thanks to this, literally every computer today has the famous antivirus. And his " godmother", which over the course of a decade turned a startup into an international corporation with cosmic turnover, then managed to survive a dramatic divorce and a difficult division of shares in the business, resigned from the post of CEO... and started again from scratch. Or rather, from the development of a fundamentally different concept for her new company InfoWatch, which, according to Kasperskaya, “at the time of launch had only one name.”

M.C.: Natalya, today Marie Claire celebrates its 20th anniversary in Russia - and during the same years you created the first big business, then changed course and built their own grandiose career. When you started, there was not such a hype around information technology as there is now; this industry was not yet called a “dream job” and a “portal to the future.” How and when did you realize that you wanted to work in IT?

Natalya Kasperskaya: I think this happened two or three years after we founded Kaspersky Lab. That is, around the beginning of the 2000s, when it became clear that it had already survived both the first and second crises, and we were in the middle of the third. In general, difficulties of various levels and crises are normal at the beginning of a startup. Then I began to understand that I was here for a long time, that I would do this all my life. In fact, I remained in the field of information security - although I later left Kaspersky Lab.

Luck and stubbornness

When asked about secrets successful business, you say that it is important to catch “subtle signals of luck”...

I wouldn't say very thin. (Laughs.) They are quite specific. Probably, in companies, as in people’s lives, a lot also depends on luck. If you want, from the location of the stars. You can study some business methods for a long time and try to apply them, but if “the stars don’t align,” it’s unlikely that everything will be easy.

You don't want to say that you read horoscopes at work, do you?

No, I don't read at all. (Laughs.) And I don’t believe in horoscopes - I think it’s complete nonsense. But luck certainly exists, and it is determined by clear factors. For example, it is important at what point you enter the market. That's right - this is at the moment of initial market growth. It’s good if the country has a very good personnel situation. And there are opportunities that no one has yet discovered, but you have already found them. But the question is: how many people do we know who get to the right point? There are very few of them; enchanting career rises are rare. In the IT world, this is Bill Gates and his Microsoft, Steve Jobs and his Apple, Brin and Page and Google. Note that Gates and Jobs are the same age, they started at the same time and in a situation where there was already a need for computers for the population, but normal means did not exist. Computers at that time were too complex, cumbersome, and inconvenient to use. In fact, both of them, albeit in different ways, came to offer the public private computers for home use. And as a result, megacorporations with multibillion-dollar turnover were born. Another example: Dell figured out how to efficiently assemble and came up with a unique model for selling computers directly, thereby dramatically lowering the price of PCs and making them even more affordable. And I also found a place in the market - it took off. Google, which, by the way, was not the first to search engines(there were already four or five search engines), he came up with an algorithm that was head and shoulders above everything existing on the market. And thanks to this they were able to take off.
To summarize, we can say that the secret of a huge business is when you do something very what people need, which is currently being implemented either insufficiently well or not being implemented at all. I like this comparison: as if you were swimming along a river and fell into a rapid - you will be carried further without your will, and you just need to paddle so that you don’t get thrown out of the stream.

What if the flow doesn’t carry?

Then you are struggling somewhere in a creek, trying to row out, but the wave throws you back, and everything moves extremely difficult and slow. For example, InfoWatch is such a difficult child, we were not immediately able to fit into the rapids. We had to flounder near the shore for a long time - either crises hit us, then the market stopped growing and we had to spend a lot of effort on its development, then suddenly new competitors appeared out of nowhere.

So it's not just luck that's needed?

Well, you must have stubbornness, of course.

Which success are you most proud of?

You know, InfoWatch has grown almost three and a half times over the past three years. And the project was really very difficult, a constant struggle from the first day. I took it in 2007 and started to figure it out almost from scratch. A year later, I began to understand something in business - and then there was a crisis, sales fell by 60%. Let's release new version- does not work. We have to roll back to the old one and at the same time completely rebuild the entire development. And then everything continues in the same spirit! I pulled out one wheel and the others got stuck. The fact that the project is now moving and even flying is a colossal achievement.

Money and risk

I often communicate with Marie Claire readers - many of them have already succeeded in business, others dream of it. How to understand whether this is “your” occupation or “not yours”?

And here you don’t need to understand. If a person has this tendency, it will definitely manifest itself. To do this, at least two qualities must come together - the love of money and the love of risk. If this is the case, most likely the person has the makings of an entrepreneur. We can talk about other features, but these two are the main ones.

Well, everyone probably loves money, but most would like to protect themselves from risks...

And entrepreneurship is generally a story about risk. First of all. You do something new, go to market with it, and the probability of failure of a new product is above 90%. This must be understood. How, for example, does the venture capital market work? Companies create new products, go to venture capitalists and ask them for funding. Capitalists look at these companies very carefully, select business projects and invest money in those they consider the best. As a result, the average ratio for a good venture capitalist is this: only one company out of ten takes off, makes a breakthrough, and actually brings in a lot of money. Three or four, depending on luck, go smoothly, and the rest simply disappear. That is, only half of the “living” companies remain in the portfolio, of which three or four have to be constantly supported, and only one takes off. But this one pays for the costs of all the others. And we note that only a tenth of all applicants end up in the portfolio of a venture capitalist - there is a very careful selection. And risky investors (who invest according to the principle of the three “Fs” - “family, friends, fools”) have an even lower success rate – 1:15.

That is, first of all, you need a strong nervous system. And what else?

Anyone who is afraid of risk should not even try. And also, if a person starts his own business, he must understand it well. Although history knows different cases. For example, when a person began to engage agriculture, being a candidate of physical and mathematical sciences. (Laughs.) He simply became interested, he delved into all the processes, spent a lot of time on it, did not give in to difficulties - and everything worked out for him.

Strength and Balance

In your opinion, is there such a thing as “women’s business”?

I think yes: women are more open to people than men, are able to feel and hear them better, and are more relationship-oriented. Although this rule is not for everyone - and among women there are those who ruin everything in any relationship.

Does the emphasis on relationships help or hinder more?

It's not always the same. When you need to be tough, it may be more difficult for a woman. When you need to improve relationships, it’s easier. I think, as always, there needs to be a balance. If a woman knows that she has a soft character, it is better to have a partner who will take the hard line. Or find an assistant, for example, a strong security chief - risks need to be reduced. This rule works not only for women, but for any manager. You need to understand your weak sides and select as assistants people who have these strengths.

Do you have any effective communication techniques?

I am not sure. It seems to me that as a woman, first of all, I have the ability to listen. It’s difficult when your subordinates’ points of view differ greatly and you need to somehow bring them together. Because I am categorically against violent measures. You cannot order a person to do something against his will. It will be ineffective and will end badly. So, we need to convince you. If this doesn't work, I suggest: let's try your own way and we'll see. Very often a person tries, then comes and admits: okay, let’s do it your way. (Laughs.) However, I often turn out to be wrong. And this is also good - it gives me the opportunity to learn.

Threats and defense

How to keep up with new technologies today? How do you yourself feel about new gadgets?

We are engaged in protection and in this sense we are in the rearguard of information technology. Defense always comes "after". Let's say a new gadget appears on the market. At first everyone is delighted, and then it turns out that the new super technology has dual-use capabilities - for espionage, for stealing information, or it runs new Trojan programs that are not recognized by current antiviruses. That’s why I don’t like new gadgets - I think they are a priori unsafe, we just don’t know these threats yet. So my husband and I discussed whether it was worth buying a new car. But I don’t want it - it has built-in Wi-Fi, the ability to remotely control it, like in all modern cars. Now a car, like a computer, is susceptible to computer viruses. So I’ll sit in my car until it breaks down (laughs).

Your business works to protect information, but today the trend is exactly the opposite: people tell everything about themselves, it’s as if a person doesn’t exist if he doesn’t broadcast on social networks 24 hours a day...

Yes unfortunately. And such people then become victims of their talkativeness. Recently, a certain company announced that it had allegedly released a tool that could determine a person’s credit rating based on their face. I don’t know how accurately this can be determined from a face, but from posts in social network establishing the level of solvency of the subject is not difficult. The task is purely technical, and the more he talks about himself, the more more information for all those curious, including, of course, scammers. The less privacy, the more risks.

Even if I write on Facebook, it goes through the control of PR specialists. Our marketing service is in charge of posting posts, and I provide relevant content. I see the social network as another communication channel - like your magazine, for example.

There is an article circulating on the Internet that Silicon Valley gurus allegedly do not buy electronic gadgets for their children and generally send them to schools where they write with chalk on a blackboard. How do you raise your children in this regard?

I think this is very correct - I would also ban all electronics in schools, at least in the lower grades. For example, in the second grade, my daughter’s paper diaries were cancelled, which means someone writes her assignments electronically, the child gets used to the fact that he doesn’t need to remember anything and doesn’t rely on his memory. Modern children are already distracted, there are too many distractions. Our eldest daughter is 11 years old, she has a computer, tablet, and smartphone. I wouldn’t buy this either, but here I have a disagreement with my husband - he believes that the child should be raised in the style of modern information technology. Indeed, it is very difficult to limit this: if you don’t buy anything, children will still find access to the Internet. Moreover, the forbidden fruit is sweet, and the child may think that it is there, under lock and key, that there is a magic door to a shining world where there are no dangers.

And what do you do?

Banning gadgets completely is wrong. It’s better to increase employment - for example, our eldest daughter is engaged in dancing, music, English, drawing, sculpting... And of course, explain: “You go on the Internet, people meet there different people, including bad ones. There’s no need to make contact, and you certainly shouldn’t let yourself be pulled into something.” In my opinion, information security should be taught from kindergarten so that you can already develop immunity to school. It's like knowing the rules traffic. It can be explained by at different levels: The fairy tale about Little Red Riding Hood is also about the fact that you don’t need to get to know just anyone.

Family and career

How do you manage to simultaneously take care of children, business, and at the same time keep up with new technologies, trends, etc.?

I don’t study new products personally - there is a special analytical department for this. And then my task as a leader is to understand what is worth doing. We are trying quite a lot of different technologies, studying startups - we bought a couple of companies this way.

How is your day and week going?

It’s very simple: there is a secretary who does the planning, taking into account my requirements. For example, do not schedule several complex meetings on one day, and if there are many of them, then it is advisable to schedule them in one place. Twice a week I set aside time to write texts and read email. I read mail every day and in the evening. I try to spend weekends with the children at the dacha - this is a must. If these days they invite you somewhere for business, as a rule, I refuse. Well, then how it goes. It’s clear that I can’t make it everywhere.

You and your husband are in the same business. Do you manage to leave work problems at home?

Not always - production meetings also occur at home from time to time. And it’s good if it all ends without a fight! (Laughs.) But somehow Igor and I manage to maintain a balance. This is part of life, your own enterprise - like another child. True, I have not one, but a group of companies. That means there are still children to take care of.

What, even for the sake of business, are you not willing to sacrifice?

Family, children are sacred. Although you don’t understand this right away. I have two “lots” of children - two sons are already adults, and when they grew up, I took less care of them. I spent a lot of time on Kaspersky Lab. Now I regret that I didn’t give my children what I could have.

You are one of richest women Russia. What is money for you?

A resource with which you can do many different useful things.

And for yourself personally?

Well, of course, I can’t say that I wear bast shoes. There are such businessmen, very greedy, who do not spend on themselves at all - I am not one of them. But I think that we need to satisfy basic needs, ensure a certain standard of living for ourselves and our family, and spend the rest on business entertainment - new products, companies, technologies.

Let's say you have a favorite clothing brand?

I have an interesting attitude towards brands in general - because I know how to build them. You can take something and make a brand out of it. That's why I don't remember them and don't tremble before them. I choose clothes from what I like. I can remember: this was what I felt comfortable with. But next time I might buy something completely different.

What would you say today to girls who would like to repeat your success?

I'm afraid to give abstract advice. This is a kind of deceit, and quite harmful. Life is multifaceted, people are different, situations are different. Perhaps the only advice I like to repeat is that modern women are often carried away by their careers and do not think about children, family, and put it off “for later.” And this is a mistake. No matter how much you pursue your career, it will still end someday. It's better to have loved ones next to you. The joyful patter of children outside the door when you come home from work - nothing can be better than this!

Natalya Kasperskaya: dossier

Natalia Kasperskaya
Age: 51 years old
Family: husband, two sons and three daughters
Education: Faculty of Applied Mathematics MIEM; UK Open University Business School
Career: from seller of accessories and software to CEO of Kaspersky Lab., then president of the InfoWatch group of companies
Hobby: playing guitar, amateur song
Sport: skiing, snowboarding, fitness
Cloth: the one you like – regardless of the brand
Trips: regular business trips around the world

Perhaps Evgeny Kaspersky would have remained a talented, but little-known programmer, if not for his ex-wife Natalya. It was she who established the successful sale of her husband’s IT developments. And while the business began to flourish, the Kaspersky family fell apart. But Natalya and Evgeniy managed to maintain their relationship and are still co-owners of Kaspersky Lab.

Divorce is not a hindrance to business

– Natalya, the company was created in 1997, and two years later you divorced Evgeniy Kaspersky, with whom you lived for almost 10 years and gave birth to two sons...

“We both understood that the company was very dear to us.” At that time, the “Laboratory” was a little over a year old, it was just beginning to rise. The divorce of the two founders could be perceived negatively by the market and put its future in jeopardy. Kaspersky and I agreed not to tell anyone about the divorce (according to rumors, Evgeniy was the initiator of the breakup, as if he left the family after meeting another woman. - Note). For a whole year we, like two partisans, remained silent and formally remained husband and wife. There was no talk of dividing the business at all.

– Was this a difficult decision for you?

– The interests of the company have always been higher than personal experiences for me. I perceived Kaspersky Lab as my child, I saw prospects for growth. And even though emotions sometimes went wild, I understood that Kaspersky and I found ourselves in a bond that could not be broken. Zhenya was an important link - a unique analyst, one of the world's top ten information security experts. And the entire business part rested on me.

Kaspersky Lab

In 1989, a graduate of the “Higher Red Banner School of the KGB” (now the Institute of Cryptography, Communications and Informatics of the Academy of the FSB of the Russian Federation) Evgeny Kaspersky “cured” his computer from a virus using a program that he himself wrote. In 1991, his wife Natalya patented the AVP program (later Kaspersky Anti-Virus) in the All-Russian Authors Society. In 1997, the couple founded Kaspersky Lab. Two years later, the company increased its share in the Russian antivirus market from 5 to 50%. Kaspersky Lab's turnover in 2009 was $480 million. It employs more than 1,700 specialists. According to Finance magazine, Natalia Kasperskaya's net worth is estimated at $462 million.

– They say that the success of Kaspersky Anti-Virus is your merit?

– The fact is that if there were no anti-virus program that caught viruses well, there would be nothing to sell. My role as a leader was not the last, but I would not completely attribute the success to myself. Business is teamwork.

– I don’t care about ratings. I was disappointed in them. I think it would be interesting to rank entrepreneurs who built a business from scratch and calculate how much money they earned. Another issue is that such a rating is difficult to compile - the information is usually closed. For example, how much does Kaspersky Lab cost? $100 million or $5 billion? No one knows. This is a closed joint stock company whose shares are not for sale. Therefore, when I saw myself in the ranking of billionaires, I was very surprised. I would be glad to see my millions in some more tangible form.

– Why didn’t you change your last name?

- I'm used to it. The divorce occurred two years after we stopped living together. By this time, I had acquired documents for this last name and decided that I would not change it. Besides, I was already known as Natalya Kasperskaya. To be honest, even at the age of 20, when I got married for the first time, I didn’t really want to change my maiden name. But Kaspersky said: “Then we are leaving the registry office!” And my second husband no longer persuaded me to change my last name.

– You have two sons from your marriage with Kaspersky and two daughters were born in your marriage to Igor Ashmanov. How did you decide?

- I got new family- What about without children? If I had gotten married for the second time earlier, I would have given birth to more, but I only have four. I have something to compare with, and I can say that raising children is easier now. Instead of diapers - diapers, instead of washing in a basin - washing machines, give birth to health! Besides, communication with a child is so pleasant! Especially until he insists on his own opinion, doesn’t stamp his foot on you, doesn’t run away for the night: “I’m spending the night with a girl tonight.” The first year is the best. Now the youngest Masha, she is a little over a year old, has gone. He twists out of his hands and runs away. That's it, my lafa is over.

“I won’t take my children to the Laboratory”

– What do your sons do?

– My eldest son Maxim is now graduating from the Geography Department of Moscow State University, and I don’t see my drive in him. Until he sets clear goals for himself. And sometimes I get the feeling that his parents are more concerned about his future than he is. The younger one was simpler, he followed in our programmer footsteps. He got a job in one company, something didn’t work out there and he quickly left. I noticed that the children of successful people are quite often weak and inert: they have everything. I try to keep mine in good shape. I heard that wealthy Americans “throw their children out onto the street,” forcing them to earn their own money for education and housing.

Children of successful people are quite often unskillful and inert: they have everything. But I try to keep mine in good shape.

-But you're not ready?

- I am not sure. Although I say: once you graduate from university, don’t expect any support from us. Next - myself.

– Are you a successful mother?

- Wait and see. Both sons entered on their own. Vanya won the Olympiad without exams, and the eldest is also a good student. But what they will do in life, time will tell. Of course, I would like to have someone to delegate matters to. But I won’t take them to the “Laboratory” until they gain experience: after all, the surname obliges.

- You probably have nothing to dream about...

– I’m not a dreamer at all. I have desires and goals. For example, now I really want to learn how to snowboard well.

DOSSIER:

Natalya Ivanovna Kasperskaya

• Born on February 5, 1966 in Moscow.
• In 1989 she graduated from the Moscow Institute of Electronic Engineering with a degree in applied mathematics.
• In 1994, she headed her husband’s anti-virus project at KAMI.
• In 1997, she became one of the founders and CEO of Kaspersky Lab.
• In 2007, she took the chair of the chairman of the board of directors. In the same year, she registered the company InfoWatch.
• Married for the second time. Husband is businessman Igor Ashmanov.
• Mother of four children: from her first marriage - Maxim (21 years old) and Ivan (18 years old), from her second - Alexandra (4 years old) and Maria (1 year old).