The Corporate Responsibility department works with hundreds of nonprofit organizations every year that fill a vital role in our communities around the world. All align with Symantec’s business, but none better than our long time partner, One Economy Corporation.

Take a nonprofit whose mission is to connect people all over the world to the Internet – providing computers, IT support, jobs, access to information in a new and innovative way to over 100,000 homes this year alone – and you have One Economy. For a company, like Symantec, whose existence so greatly depends on the Internet – that’s a great partner.

Over the last five years we have worked together to educate low income communities worldwide about Internet safety, managing your online reputation, and keeping your identity and personal information secure - allowing them to work and play freely in their newly connected world.

Building...

Symantec is at the center of one of the most significant challenges facing the ‘on-line’ world.  How do we protect user privacy while allowing greater and greater connection?  Greater connection between people is more than just the ability to meet people on-line (although there are some rather significant businesses built on this basic premise).  Greater connection allows for a sea-change in innovation and advancement.  The ability to solve challenges on vastly greater scales is hailed by some as the greatest hope to address global challenges that face society and the world today.

But the motives to foster greater connection are not always so high-minded.  From greater access to potential customers and marketing targeted at our personal interests to criminal access of personal data, many of the platforms in the connected world are balancing the desire of society to connect with the desire of entities to exploit information.

This...

This week Ethisphere announced the 2011 World’s Most Ethical Companies and Symantec made the list for the fourth year in a row. I was proud to represent Symantec at the awards event, and while there I reflected on what such an award really means to us. It is an endorsement that we are doing some things right; more importantly, however, it sets an expectation for our employees and other stakeholders that we will continue to strive to act with integrity and exercise good business judgment. 

Receiving this award is a reminder that ethics and compliance doesn’t just happen at a company; rather, it's an intentional act which requires participation by employees at all levels of the organization. This collective action happens because a company devotes resources and energy to building a strong ethical corporate culture. We must continually assess our programs and evaluate what we...

Fate helped me find a great way to give back and make the world a little better. 

Approxiamately ten years ago I was on a plane going to visit a customer in Lancaster, PA. I found myself sitting next to a Jesuit priest who was just starting a nonprofit in Camden, NJ. HopeWorks 'N Camden's goal was to help bring technology and literacy skills to at-risk inner city youth. 

I remember thinking to myself that if I really believed in my department's motto that education powers people, then what a great group to help. So I took the opportunity to help this organization. 

Camden at first glance is really bleak place. It's considered one of the poorest cities in the nation - nearly 50 percent of the city's young people live in poverty. The high school dropout rate is nearly 70 percent, and 34 percent of the city's young people are unemployed...