DH Kass, Senior Contributing Blogger

July 13, 2012

3 Min Read
Kaspersky Boosts Deal Registration Rewards

Gotham City has Batman to keep it safe. Channel partners have Kaspersky Lab. The security software vendor, which earlier this month announced a sweepstakes for Batman fans to help the Dark Knight defeat the villain Bane and protect Gotham City, now has crafted a pretty sweet deal registration program for channel partners to safeguard sales opportunities.

The malware vendor has upgraded its deal registration offering to virtually double the rewards available to North America channel partners, said Christopher Doggett, Kaspersky vice president, North America Channel Sales.

“We listened to what our partners said was most important to them and doubled down on deal control and program elements that provide margin protection,” he said.

In enhancing the program, the company removed some of the restrictions to registering opportunities and made any sale for more than 50 nodes now eligible for registration, Doggett said. The upgraded rewards and protection also extend to license renewals, offering the partner of record additional rewards on each renewal transaction they proactively pursue.

The program now features two reward levels — one for partners regularly engaged with Kaspersky’s sales team and another for occasional sellers.

Doggett noted the program enhancements have been operational for about two weeks but the company held off on a public announcement until updating its partner network on the changes.

Revisions to the deal registration program are not promotional, said Doggett, but are now the new standard.

“Our message to partners is simple: We know your time is valuable,” he said. “If you invest it in engaging with us, we’ll deliver value that you won’t find elsewhere. And as we grow our business together, your knowledge combined with our program will offer unparalleled rewards.”

Last month, Kaspersky celebrated the company’s 15th year in business and marked the anniversary by preparing a list of what it considers the 15 most influential, malicious programs in history:

  • 1986 — Brain, the first PC virus, spread by writing its code to the boot sector of floppy disks

  • 1988 — Morris worm infected 10 percent of computers connected to the Internet (about 6,000 machines)

  • 1992 — Michelangelo, the first virus to attract massive media attention

  • 1995 — Concept, the first macro virus

  • 1999 — Melissa ushers in the era of mass-mailing of malware responsible for huge global epidemics

  • 2003 — Slammer, a fileless worm, responsible for a massive worldwide epidemic

  • 2004 — Cabir: first proof-of-concept for Symbian; propagated via Bluetooth

  • 2006 — Leap, the first virus for Mac OSX

  • 2007 — Storm Worm [Zhelatin] pioneers the use of distributed C&C servers

  • 2008 — Koobface, the first malware to target Facebook

  • 2008 — Conficker, one of the biggest epidemics in history, infects businesses, home users and governments in over 200 countries

  • 2010 — FakePlayer, SMS Trojan for Android

  • 2010 — Stuxnet, a targeted attack on SCADA [Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition] systems–signaled the advent of the cyberwar era

  • 2011 — Duqu, a sophisticated Trojan that collects intelligence about its targets

  • 2012 — Flame, a highly sophisticated, malicious program that is actively being used as a cyberweapon to target entities in several countries

“Recent attacks such as Stuxnet, Duqu and Flame have shown just how vulnerable IT infrastructures are to military and terrorist threats,” said Eugene Kaspersky, Kaspersky chief executive and co-founder.

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About the Author(s)

DH Kass

Senior Contributing Blogger, The VAR Guy

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