Building the UK's cyber security skill base and economy has been an ongoing goal of the UK government and its Cyber Security Strategy.
As such, many were no doubt pleased when Russian advanced persistent threat-buster and protector of all things nuclear, Kaspersky Labs opened a new 200-person office in London, promising that it will play a pivotal role in its crusade to "save the world from hackers".
Company founder and cyber-doomsday prophet, Eugene Kaspersky was on hand at the London launch – attended by V3 and all the other security movers and shakers – and went so far as to list the office as one of the firm's new command centres.
"Our mission is [to] save the world - it's really simple and easy to remember," he said. "This office space will be responsible not just for Great Britain's operations, but also for Europe and a little bit of global. We're recognising London as a great place, as an international city, where its easier to find the right people for our business that can help us to protect our customers and to save the world."
However, despite his bold statement, speaking to V3, Kaspersky said it wouldn't be superhero white hats that would lead the fight in the London office, but some of the UK's "best and brightest" pencil pushers and salesmen.
"This office will mainly be responsible for the sales and marketing team. Here it will be for Britain and Europe. This is a great city as it's global and its easier to find people that can work internationally than it is in places like Moscow, Germany and France. This is one of the main reasons we moved the command centre of our European operation to London," Kaspersky said.
Confused? So were we. How can salesmen save the world? However, the UK's going through a pretty big cyber skills drought at the moment, and pretty much every company and government agency is reporting difficulty finding cyber-savvy recruits. Even the newly launched National Crime Agency recently had to recruit unskilled people for its cyber team on specialist "training" scheme contracts late last year.
As a consequence it's actually probably a good thing Kaspersky's going to stick with its tried-and-tested Russian security gurus when it comes to actually taking on the malware-makers, as Mr Kaspersky explained.
"Most of our research and development is still based in Russia because the Russian engineers are the best. We're happy with Russian engineers and we know many British companies are happy with Russian engineers as well. It's the same in Silicon Valley and Israel. Everybody wants the best and that's them," he said.
Luckily, for any aspirational British white hat, Kaspersky did confirm he's on the hunt for a new member to his elite Global Research and Analysis Team (Great), so all is not lost for wannabe UK cyber experts.
"We have our security experts team and that's very international, we have people from everywhere in there. So we are looking for UK security experts as well, but only the best of the best," he told V3.
However, to any budding cyber expert looking to get into the team, be warned, you'll have some pretty big shoes to fill. For those who don't remember Great is an award-winning team responsible for finding and dissecting numerous bits of top-end malware, including the notorious Flame, Red October and Icefog campaigns.
Jobs will be needed, though, especially if 2013 is anything to go by. Last year saw an influx of advanced threats and if current forecasts are anything to go by, things are only going to get worse in 2014.
With this in mind – while we're still a little disappointed the London office won't be doing research and development – we can't help but wish the London marketers and any Brit lucky enough to get onto Kaspersky's elite team the best of luck.
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