Gartner just released their annual report on endpoint security (see: Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection Platforms, Gartner, 2010)

As you can read in the report, Symantec extended its lead both in terms of vision and ability to execute.  What is really notable, however, is the strong statement Gartner made about the future of endpoint security.  The reports starts with an indictment, "Malware effectiveness continues to accelerate, while vendors are busy polishing increasingly ineffective solutions and doing little to fundamentally reduce the attack surface and protect users."

Gartner goes on to state, "Signature-based malware detection has been limping along on life support for...

The holiday season is upon us and, as usual, many people are planning on taking time off from work. But with the proliferation of mobile devices such as smartphones, “time off” doesn’t exactly mean what it used to. Symantec recently conducted a survey to uncover enterprise mobile device users’ expected smartphone habits and usage patterns – particularly those that relate to mobile security and management – while out of the office over the holiday season and in general. Here is a look at the key findings:

The interesting thing about this finding is that 62 percent of respondents do not simply plan to access confidential data on their smartphones, but expect they will need to access this sensitive data while away from the office during the holiday season. Sure, respondents might access and view this data in the privacy of their home, but in all...

Garrett Bechler, a Security Solutions Architect at Symantec has put together a valuable list of tips to reduce the impact of SEP in VDI infrastructures.  With his permission, I thought I would post them here.  These are approaches that have been used in some larger (15-20K node) VDI instances to help ensure that SEP has minimal impact.

1)      Upgrade VDI devices (And SEPM) to latest build of SEP in order to take advantage of the new Resource Leveling settings introduced in SEP 11 06, including Scan Randomization and Content Randomization.

2)      Use the content randomizer in the client communication settings to randomize definition and signature delivery. Based on client density we have found the following to be a pretty decent guideline based on a 1 hour client pull based heartbeat:

a.      25-30 VDI instances per host – 2 hour randomization

b.  ...

We recently surveyed 1,580 private businesses worldwide that are involved in industries termed critical infrastructure providers, i.e., their industries are of such importance that if their cyber networks were successfully attacked and disabled, it would result in an actual threat to national security.

Our survey measured the awareness among private companies of efforts by governments to institute critical infrastructure programs, whether or not companies would be willing to cooperate with governments in those efforts, and the state of readiness of companies to ward off nation-wide attacks targeted at specific industries. A recent example of this type of attack is the Stuxnet worm and how it targeted energy companies around the world.

The survey revealed that critical infrastructure providers’ networks are being attacked. Fifty-three percent of respondents...