Gabor Szappanos graduated from the Eotvos Lorand University of Budapest with a degree in physics. His first job was developing diagnostic software and hardware for nuclear power plants at the Computer and Automation Research Institute. Gabor started antivirus work in 1995 and joined VirusBuster in 2001, where he was responsible for taking care of macro virus and script malware; in 2002, he became head of the virus lab. Between 2008 and 2016, he was a member of the board of directors in Anti-Malware Testing Standards Organizations (AMTSO), and, in 2012, he joined Sophos as a Principal Malware Researcher.