Symantec Endpoint Protection 12 Delivers Unrivaled Security with Fastest Performance

Powered by Insight and built for virtual environments, new solution brings faster, more powerful security to businesses of all sizes

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – RSA Conference 2011 - Symantec Corp. (NASDAQ: SYMC) today announced new versions of Symantec Endpoint Protection and Symantec Endpoint Protection Small Business Edition (currently in beta), providing businesses of all sizes with advanced protection while improving system performance. Complete with advanced features to secure virtual infrastructures and powered by Insight, Symantec’s award-winning community and cloud-based reputation technology, Symantec Endpoint Protection 12 is designed to detect and block sophisticated new threats earlier and more accurately than any other security product.

Click to Tweet: Symantec Endpoint Protection 12 provides advanced protection and improves system performance: http://bit.ly/ezO50j

Security threats have become more sophisticated and more widespread, creating a challenge for traditional signature-based security solutions. Last year, attackers unleashed more than 286 million distinct malicious programs, an average of more than nine new threats every second of every day. This explosion in malware scope and complexity is due in large part to the proliferation of easy-to-use attack toolkits—such as Zeus—which lower the barrier of entry in cybercrime. These toolkits enable hackers to continuously generate new mutated malware variants, each targeting a different victim, making traditional discovery and fingerprinting of these threats nearly impossible. According to Symantec’s Attack Toolkits and Malicious Websites Report, at least 61 percent of threat activity can be attributed to attack toolkits. As these toolkits grow in popularity, the trend towards millions of narrowly distributed, high impact threats will continue. Symantec Endpoint Protection 12 leverages Insight to provide unmatched protection against this new threat landscape.

Key Benefits

* Unrivaled Security: Symantec Endpoint Protection 12 blocks new and unknown threats missed by traditional signature, heuristic, behavioral and HIPS-based security solutions. All of the product’s security engines are now reputation-enabled, leveraging Insight’s online reputation database to identify and block malware attacks. Symantec’s Insight has analyzed the anonymous software adoption patterns from more than 175 million customer computers to automatically derive highly accurate security ratings for more than 2.5 billion unique software files—Insight has ratings for virtually every software file, good or bad in existence. In addition, SONAR 3, the world’s first hybrid behavioral-reputation engine, blocks zero-day and highly targeted threats based on their joint behavior-reputation profile. As part of a commissioned test, the leading security testing organization, AV-Test.org, recently compared a number of major endpoint security products on their effectiveness in blocking new threats as well as cleaning up pre-existing infections. Symantec Endpoint Protection 12 (beta) received the top score against all tested competitors in both categories.

* Fastest Performance: Symantec Endpoint Protection 12 leverages cloud-based community intelligence to reduce the overhead of virus scanning by as much as 70 percent by using Symantec Insight to automatically identify and whitelist trusted high-reputation files, resulting in fewer, faster and smarter scans. The new, Insight-driven compatible scan engine is also designed to do most of its work while computers are idle. In the latest roundup of PassMark Software’s performance test of enterprise and small business security solutions, Symantec Endpoint Protection 12 reported the fastest scan speed and was found to be twice as fast as the average security solution. Symantec Endpoint Protection 12 also used the least memory,57 percent less memory usage than the average security solution.

* Built for Virtual Environments: Symantec Endpoint Protection 12 offers comprehensive defense against all types of attacks and is optimized for performance on virtual systems. Symantec Endpoint Protection 12 can whitelist baseline images, maintain a local Insight cache, randomize scans and updates, and automatically identify and manage virtual clients. This is above and beyond the performance improvements gained with Insight. Together these innovations dramatically reduce the load on virtual hosts, alleviating ‘AV Storms’/concurrent scans from bogging down system resources and allowing for faster, more responsive systems, which can in turn support greater density of virtual instances. Symantec is working closely with VMware to take full advantage of virtualization awareness and introspection capabilities based on VMware vShield™ technology and Symantec Endpoint Protection 12 is the first step along the optimization path for virtual environments.

* Small Business Edition: Leveraging Insight and Sonar 3, Symantec Endpoint Protection Small Business Edition offers enterprise-class threat detection technologies and performance improvements with simple to use features such as an installation wizard, pre-configured policy settings and automated notifications and reports for small business customers. Symantec Endpoint Protection Small Business Edition meets small business needs with the fastest, most effective anti-malware capabilities in the industry. Small businesses will have peace of mind that their data is safe from cybercriminals, so that they can stay focused on growing their businesses.

Beta Registration and Availability

Presently, Symantec Endpoint Protection 12 is in an invitation-only beta and is expected to be available for public beta in April 2011. The new versions of Symantec Endpoint Protection 12 are scheduled to be generally available later this year and can be purchased through Symantec’s worldwide network of value-added authorized resellers, distributors and systems integrators or directly. For more information on Symantec Endpoint Protection and to register for the public beta, please click here.

Click to Tweet: Sign up for the beta of Symantec Endpoint Protection 12: http://bit.ly/fFovy6

Quotes:

“Cyber attacks are increasing in size, scope and sophistication and companies of all sizes are at risk. Symantec Endpoint Protection 12 leverages our award winning Insight technology to give our customers —from small businesses to large enterprises—the strongest protection and fastest performance available.”
-- Francis deSouza, senior vice president, Enterprise Security Group, Symantec

“As virtualization plays an increasingly critical role in the enterprise, we see a growing need for security solutions designed to secure the virtual infrastructure. We are collaborating closely with Symantec so that VMware vShield™ Endpoint technology and Symantec Endpoint Protection will work together seamlessly, further ensuring that our customers have the security solutions they need for running business-critical applications on the VMware vSphere® platform.”
-- Parag Patel, vice president, Global Strategic Alliances, VMware

“The reporting capabilities are much improved, and that means a lot less time we have to spend monitoring and addressing threats to our network and systems. Symantec has developed endpoint security software that is effective against the more insidious, targeted attacks without negatively impacting system performance.”
-- Christian Sosa, network security engineer, 20th Century Fox

“We’re a growing small business and our security needs become more complex each day. Since participating in the new Symantec Endpoint Protection Small Business Edition Beta program, we are seeing improved performance on our machines and more importantly, we feel relieved to know we don’t have worry about the threats out there.”
-- Robert Lantrip, Owner, Ourco Welding and Industrial Supplies

“Symantec is delivering a product that will help us identify and block the new threats that are created every day. I’ve also seen dramatically improved scan times because the reputation-based security technology does not waste time scanning files with good reputations. That means our users are able to work without being slowed down or interrupted by our security software.”
-- Seth Shestack, associate director of information security, Temple University

“I was particularly impressed with the Intrusion Prevention Scanning. It improves the speed of scans, significantly reducing the impact on the performance of users’ computers. Additionally, the installation time for Symantec Endpoint Protection is really fast, and with the amazing new features, I am anxious for it to be released to install for our clients as soon as possible.”
-- Alex Solovyev, Network Support Technician, Networking Solutions

About Business Solutions from Symantec

Symantec helps organizations secure and manage their information-driven world with endpoint security, messaging security, web security, data protection, identity authentication and security management solutions.

About Security Technology and Response

The Security Technology and Response (STAR) organization, which includes Security Response, is a worldwide team of security engineers, threat analysts, and researchers that provides the underlying functionality, content, and support for all Symantec corporate and consumer security products, including the new Insight and SONAR 3 technologies. With Response centers located throughout the world, STAR monitors malicious code reports from more than 130 million systems across the Internet, receives data from 40,000 network sensors in more than 200 countries, and tracks more than 25,000 vulnerabilities affecting more than 55,000 technologies from more than 8,000 vendors. The team uses this vast intelligence to develop and deliver the world’s most comprehensive security protection.

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.

Note to Editors: If you would like additional information on Symantec Corporation and its products, please visit the Symantec News Room at http://www.symantec.com/news. All prices noted are in U.S. dollars and are valid only in the United States.

Symantec and the Symantec Logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Forward-looking Statements:Any forward-looking indication of plans for products is preliminary and all future release dates are tentative and are subject to change. Any future release of the product or planned modifications to product capability, functionality, or feature are subject to ongoing evaluation by Symantec, and may or may not be implemented and should not be considered firm commitments by Symantec and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions.