Ceremony of Armenian President’s 2015 IT Award for global contribution in the field of IT sphere took place at Armenian President’s Palace tonight. Following the ceremony, reception was held in honor of Eugene Kaspersky, the award recipient and CEO of the Kaspersky Lab, and his wife.
In his speech, Hovik Musayelyan, the Chairman of the Executive Council of the Committee of the Global Information Technologies (GIT) presented the success and achievements of the most dynamically developing IT sphere, stressing that the sphere has ensured 20-25% growth in the recent years, its specific weight in GDP constituting about 3%.
Musayelyan also touched on the initiatives implemented with the aim of fostering the development of the area thanks to the cooperation between the Armenian government and the private sector. He presented in great detail the prehistory on the Republic’s President IT Award for global contribution in the field of IT, the principles of the activity of the award-giving committee, the previous recipients of that award, as well as this year’s recipient, Eugene Kaspersky.
President Serzh Sargsyan bestowed the award upon Eugene Kaspersky. In his speech during the event, Mr Kaspersky gave a thank-you speech.
“I’m very grateful to Mr President, I’m very grateful to the Committee, which selected my candidacy from the list of candidates whose merits were not less than mine. I’m grateful for the sponsors who supported this event. And I promise to work even better. We must save this world, not only the cyber world, but the whole world, since now there’s no longer difference between the traditional physical world and cyber space. They are merged and we must create working systems and conditions so that cyber attacks – issues which we don’t need – simply do not exist. I’ll do my best for this to become reality. And this award is another very serious impetus for this work. Thank you very much,” Mr Kaspersky said.
For his part, President Sargsyan also made a speech during the award-giving ceremony.
“One of the most important initiatives in Armenia in the recent years has perhaps been the special attention to the IT [sphere]. Combining the efforts of the state and private sectors, we managed to turn this sphere into a really strategic one. And the most pleasant part here is the continuous engagement of the youth in this sphere.
Nevertheless, it’s important to realize that the IT is not a merely economic factor in the life of Armenia. Currently modernity enters Armenia through these technologies. Moreover, the informational technologies have become one of the most important means of modernizing Armenia.
The system is characterized not by a mistake, but the capacity to respond to the mistake. It is here that people devoted to the struggle against computer viruses and hazardous elements come to our help. Among them Eugene Kaspersky and the specialists united in the lab created by him, assume their unique and important place,” Sargsyan said.
