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Kaspersky Lab wins notable female recognition and appoints new chief technology officer

Published on: 9 Oct 2018

Kaspersky Lab has announced some significant people news recently, with the appointment of a new chief technology officer and a notable recognition.

Firstly, Cecilia Lessard, senior director of distribution, MSP and channel sales operations at Kaspersky Lab, has appeared in CRN’s annual list of ‘100 People You Don’t Know But Should’ in the IT channel for 2018.

Lessard - a dedicated member of the Kaspersky Lab channel team for nearly a decade - plays a key role in managing the partner advisory council that supports the company in decisions made around channel partner programme efforts in the US.

She is responsible for leading B2B channel distribution, including alignment and execution of strategic objectives through marketing, operations and sales enablement, as well as scaling and supporting the company’s MSP programme.

This is the second esteemed recognition for Lessard in 2018. Earlier this year, she earned the ‘CRN Women of the Channel’ title for the second year running.

Jason Stein, vice president of channel for Kaspersky Lab North America, congratulated Lessard for the successes.

“She has consistently exemplified what it means to excel in this industry and I am incredibly proud of her unmatched work ethic, talent and exceptional leadership within the company,” he commented.

Elsewhere, Andrey Efremov was appointed chief technology officer in late September.

Efremov will focus specifically on next-gen endpoint security solutions, advanced threat protection solutions and services, as well as security solutions for enterprise and SMB cloud infrastructures.

He will also work on developing breakthrough security offerings for areas like fintech, automotive and Internet of Things.

Over his 14 years with Kaspersky Lab, Andrey has been involved in the development of a system for automated malware analysis, led the development and implementation of the renowned Kaspersky Security Network cloud system and managed the development from scratch of Kaspersky Lab’s whitelisting technology.

Company chief executive Eugene Kaspersky hailed Efremov as “a talented technical professional and an effective team manager”.

“He’ll undoubtedly help the company in its further successful development,” concluded the Kaspersky head.