Equal opportunities

We start with schools and universities

We are committed to making IT education accessible and open to everyone from an early age. Accordingly, Kaspersky partners with schools and universities around the world, conducting lectures, master classes, and internship programs so that all schoolchildren and university students, regardless of gender, can better understand the technology sector and see their own opportunities in IT and cybersecurity.

We foster a women's IT community within the company

Involving and supporting women in the IT industry is an important part of Kaspersky's corporate culture, which is shaped at the level of the board of directors and senior management. Additionally, women who have already achieved success at various levels actively participate in support programs: they communicate with colleagues and subordinates, share experiences, and inspire beginning IT specialists by their example.

Moreover, we support our internal women's tech community and initiatives aimed at increasing women's representation in technology and related roles.

We ensure equal access to career opportunities

Kaspersky strives to be as fair and open as possible to prevent gender discrimination.

We apply a skills‑based approach when recruiting new employees for our team. We are primarily interested in candidates' professional skills, qualifications, and relevant experience. We evaluate competencies without regard to gender, focusing on a candidate's motivation and the extent to which they share our values and are willing to contribute to the overall mission. This approach helps to minimize the risk of discrimination and maintain a fair and transparent hiring system.

We support female employees' parenthood and well‑being

In all countries where we operate, we strive to inspire our female employees along their career paths and support them at the most important moments in their lives. Kaspersky offers support programs for parents in every region where we operate, but specifics may vary depending on the laws of a given country.

We bring women together in online communities

In 2021, Kaspersky launched its Empower Women project, an online worldwide platform about women in cybersecurity and technology that brings together research from various regions, news, and the inspiring Women in IT podcast, which features female employees. During the reporting period, ten Kaspersky employees in various countries shared stories of their professional and personal development on the platform, and four opinion round‑ups and six special projects appeared on the website.

In 2024, we launched our Letters To The Past project, where our employees share personal and professional stories in the form of letters to their younger selves, describing the challenges they overcame and the lessons that helped them become who they are today.

We inspire the next generation of women in IT

To help the upcoming generation of women in technology, Kaspersky launched the Future You in Tech global initiative, an online quiz aimed at schoolgirls and female university students choosing their career path. The project helps girls and young women understand the scope of cybersecurity, available roles and career opportunities, and which ones might be right for them based on their personal interests and talents. It also lowers barriers to entry to the profession.

In 2025, we actively promoted the project internationally: we worked with Africaines in Tech to present the quiz at the Transform Africa Summit, organized by Smart Africa in Conakry, Guinea, and at the Women in Tech special online session of the ATDA ATDA — Assises de la Transformation Digitale en Afrique, a major industry event on digital transformation in Africa. conference in Rabat, Morocco. This helped attract more young women from African countries who are considering a career in IT. At the time of writing, more than 180 young women had taken the quiz, and this number continues to grow as the initiative expands its geographic reach.

Special projects about women in tech

Kaspersky implements several global themed projects dedicated to women's role, past and present, in the IT industry.

Our initiatives for 2025 included Women in the History of Tech, which highlights women who helped advance technology in a wide range of fields — from cybersecurity, IT entrepreneurship, and digital education to telecommunications, public digital policy, e‑commerce, and public safety. The project's participants included female professionals with experience in tech businesses, startups, the public sector, and educational initiatives, demonstrating the diversity of career paths in the digital industry.

Another initiative is Mothers in Tech, dedicated to our female employees who combine their professional careers with motherhood. The project shows that self‑actualization can take different forms and can be tailored to individual life circumstances and priorities.

That same year, we launched another new project: Confronting IT's Career Barriers, an interactive quiz that shows the obstacles that specialists face in technology fields. Participants decide what barriers they are willing to tolerate and learn how these compromises can hinder growth and why they cannot be ignored. The quiz also provides recommendations on how to overcome these barriers and explains their significance in the technology sector.

In total, more than 400 men and women from all over the world took the quiz. They helped identify the most pressing barriers, which included a toxic or unhealthy work environment, overwork, limited career advancement opportunities, insufficiently transparent promotion criteria, and biased employee evaluations. The results demonstrate the importance of changes in corporate culture.