Kaspersky Lab
New leadership in Europe and the DACH region
Ilijana Vavan has taken over the position of Managing Director for Europe at Kaspersky Lab. As General Manager DACH, the top manager has also been responsible for the security company's business in Germany, Austria and Switzerland since January 2018.
Ilijana Vavan will be responsible for the strategic direction and growth of Kaspersky Lab in the markets for home users, medium-sized companies and large organizations. In her new position as Managing Director for Europe, she replaces Arno Coster, who has held the position since October 2016 and whose future the Russian security specialist has not disclosed. As General Manager DACH, she will also assume responsibility for Germany, Austria and Switzerland - her predecessor Holger Suhl had already left the company last summer after a good four years. Coster had been managing the business in German-speaking countries on an interim basis.
Vavan has many years of professional experience in the IT industry with a focus on IT security, SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) and cloud, as well as enterprise applications and IoT. Previously, she was Oracle's Senior Sales Director responsible for sales growth in Germany and Switzerland. Vavan has also held management positions at Kontron, Saba Software, Juniper Networks and as Managing Director for Western Europe at Kaspersky Lab (between 2010 and 2012). Prior to that, she was responsible for various areas at Microsoft, including enterprise and partner strategy in the Central and Eastern Europe region.
Ilijana Vavan holds a Master's degree in Computer Science from the Technical University of Twente in the Netherlands. Through award-winning achievements and her extensive IT and cybersecurity industry knowledge, Vavan has built an outstanding reputation as a leader with responsibility for business development, management, sales, marketing, services, strategy and execution.
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