Symantec Designs Security Solutions Optimized for Virtual Environments

New virtualization security technologies improve performance and better protect data

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – – Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC), today announced its security solutions have been optimized to drive increased density and performance in virtual environments. Symantec’s endpoint security, messaging security and endpoint management products help businesses reduce the cost and complexity of maintaining secure virtual environments by providing a common operating, licensing and management model across physical and virtual infrastructures. Symantec’s security solutions are designed to be applicable for environments running any of the common hypervisors available today.

Symantec’s virtualization security strategy involves delivering customers Single Instance Security centered around complete protection, covering attack vectors that traditional antivirus protection cannot defend against. Single Instance Security represents Symantec’s shift from in-guest, multi-instance protection, where each guest has its own instance of malware definitions and scanning engines, to out-of-guest protection where guests share a single instance of relevant protection technologies. The result will be better protection of data and reduced operational and performance challenges associated with securing online and offline virtual environments.

“By innovating aggressively across our product lines, Symantec is focused on providing customers with the tools they need to confidently move forward with virtualization security projects,” said Francis deSouza, senior vice president, Enterprise Security Group, Symantec. “Our defense-in-depth approach to securing virtual and physical environments allows us to deliver network-, file- and behavior-based protection technologies from the industry leader in security.”

Symantec is working to deliver next generation technologies that are designed to ensure reputation, behavioral and contextual information is available to enable new protection techniques through the single-instance approach. This new approach plans to ensure context is applied to maximize efficiency and avoid unnecessary or duplicate scanning and content updates. The following video can be viewed for additional information.

Moving forward, Symantec will continue to provide customers the confidence they need to securely expand their virtual environments. For example, Symantec’s reputation-based security technology enhances security through community-based reputation, which will greatly increase both the performance and effectiveness of protecting critical systems. With this new technology, the impact of antivirus scanning is reduced by as much as 90 percent by scanning only those files it has identified as risky. The technology enables Symantec to harness the anonymous software usage patterns of more than 100 million Symantec customer computers, and deliver protection against micro-distributed, mutating threats, that would otherwise evade traditional security solutions.

Today, customers using Symantec Endpoint Protection can immediately take advantage of specific features that help ensure better security for virtual environments while maintaining performance and stability. For example, Symantec Endpoint Protection includes a technology called resource leveling which minimizes the impact of full system scans on multi-guest environments. The following whitepaper includes more technical information on securing virtual environments with Symantec Endpoint Protection.

"As our clients continue to move from physical to virtual environments, we’re focused on providing them with solutions and services to ensure they stay secure and compliant with their IT policies and regulations,” said David Casillo senior vice president, Strategic Partnerships and Marketing, Insight. “Symantec’s ability to secure both physical and virtual endpoints enables Insight to provide our customers with the high level of performance and protection they demand.”

In addition, Symantec’s endpoint management solutions seamlessly manage virtual environments and help maintain the stability of tier-one applications. Symantec provides the essential capabilities to discover, provision, manage and monitor client and server infrastructures across a range of physical and virtual platforms, allowing IT administrators to increase the availability of applications and automate manual efforts to ensure a consistent, reliable and supportable IT environment.

Symantec’s enterprise security solutions for virtual and physical environments enable businesses to better protect their intellectual property by addressing the following five core IT security challenges: developing and enforcing IT policies, protecting information, authenticating identities, managing systems, and protecting infrastructure. For more information, customers can visit www.symantec.com/virtualization.

About Symantec

Symantec is a global leader in providing security, storage and systems management solutions to help consumers and organizations secure and manage their information-driven world. Our software and services protect against more risks at more points, more completely and efficiently, enabling confidence wherever information is used or stored. More information is available at www.symantec.com.