To our stakeholders:
We live in a world that is more connected than ever—last year alone electronic information grew by more than 60 percent. At Symantec, we believe it is critical that people have simple and secure access to their information—anytime, anywhere, and from any device.
Yet today’s threat landscape is increasingly toxic and targeted. Increased vigilance is needed to protect confidential personal and business information from cybercriminals and to ensure it is backed up and available when necessary.
We envision a world where people are able to work and play freely online. To accomplish this goal, we need to help individuals, families, and organizations protect their information and their identities. We also have a tremendous opportunity to increase our outreach efforts and educate more people on how they can navigate the connected world safely.
As we work to help our customers and grow our business, we recognize our actions are having an impact on our global footprint. We are building new data centers, adding more servers, and running these servers 24/7 to support our customers’ needs. As a result, we are increasing our use of land, energy, and other resources. In order to lead in the long-term, we must address key risks and challenges to our business while continuing to improve all aspects of our operations.
In the coming year, we see three key areas of corporate responsibility risk—which are also opportunities—for Symantec:
- better serving our customers in both our consumer and enterprise businesses;
- attracting, developing, and inspiring talented employees, in part by increasing opportunities for women in the workplace; and
- minimizing our greenhouse gas emissions by using energy as efficiently as possible.
As we manage these issues, we continue to focus on maintaining and enhancing the foundations of our business: good governance, ethical operations, and a connection to our communities. Our priorities, which we determined based on our own internal analysis and through engagement with our stakeholders, are reflected in the material issues we discuss in this year’s Corporate Responsibility Report. We believe addressing these issues is critical to our continued success.
FY11 Accomplishments
We’ve accomplished a great deal in the past year on several important fronts.
Governance and ethics. Symantec adopted a Global Supply Chain Manufacturing and Fulfillment Code of Conduct for our manufacturing supply chain. We also made enhancements to our Symantec EthicsLine, where stakeholders can voice concerns and ask questions.
United Nations Global Compact (UNGC). Symantec is a signatory to the UNGC and an active participant in the UNGC U.S. Network. In 2010, we joined the UNGC Anti-Corruption Working Group and the UNGC LEAD Program. We also support the UNGC Women's Empowerment Principles. We continue to support, and encourage all companies to adopt the UNGC’s principles to protect human rights, uphold ethical labor conditions, preserve the environment, and combat corruption.
Talent management. To support the professional development of all employees and increase workforce diversity, we launched a new training initiative and focused resources on developing opportunities for women. Our ongoing challenge is to bring more women to Symantec’s workforce in general and, in particular, to develop them into leadership positions. Our goal for FY12 is to continue to increase the percentage of women in leadership positions to reflect the percentage of women in the company.
Environmental performance. We increased the number of U.S. Green Building Council LEED-certified buildings to 16, including one data center, from nine in FY10. Our site in GreenPark, United Kingdom, is Symantec's second LEED-certified facility in the EMEA region. We will pursue LEED certification for additional new and existing buildings in our global portfolio throughout FY12 and beyond. A significant challenge for us is to find new ways to increase portfolio consistency and the energy efficiency of data centers as we expand our data-storage services.
Community engagement. In FY11 we continued to invest in the communities in which our employees live and work, and did so in ways that align with and support our business interests. For example, over the next three years we are investing USD $900,000 in Room to Read, an international nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting literacy and gender equality in the developing world. Our support will help Room to Read extend its operations into new parts of India and reach over 20,000 children. We also strengthened our relationships with many existing partners, such as One Economy and Common Sense Media. And in keeping with our mission to make the Internet safe for families as well as businesses, we made our award-winning online family safety service, Norton Online Family, available for free in 25 languages.
We look to all of our stakeholders to help us understand what is important to them so that we can fulfill our responsibilities to each group. We invite you to share your thoughts on our progress and plans. With your help, we are confident of our success.
Enrique Salem
President and CEO
Symantec Corporation