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Symantec Analyst Relations

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Putting the "I" Back into "IT"
D Thomson | 15 Feb 2013 | 0 comments

It’s interesting to me that many IT organisations that I speak to now have started to realise that “infrastructure” may no longer be king.

If I think about the projects and strategies that I was working on 5 or so years ago, almost all project focus (time, effort and money) was directed specifically at IT “plumbing”…. “We need to implement archiving, let’s buy some storage and a bit of software”, “our business is asking for highly available systems, let go build a second datacenter”.

One of my favourite IT books of the past decade and one that many will remember was, “Does IT Matter?” by Nicholas Carr (here). This thought provoking (and seemingly controversial) work discussed the idea that, in all industries, infrastructure eventually becomes...

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Symantec’s Corporate Responsibility – Our Commitment to Your Information
Neal Watkins | 12 Feb 2013 | 0 comments

Symantec released its  2012 Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) report at the end of October. It’s not for any company to make the final judgement on how well it rates in terms of CSR, but you can read independent reviews from environmental analysis firm TriplePundit and Ethical Corporation.
 
From the top, the report divides into three sections. Our People, which covers how Symantec develops as an inclusive, diverse organisation; The World, tackling how the company minimises its footprint and maximises its positive social impact; and Your Information, which specifically highlighted the ways in which...

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‘Good Enough’ Protection in the Cloud
Sian John | 11 Feb 2013 | 0 comments

There is a lot of fear out there when it comes to dealing with the cloud, especially with so much hype surrounding the technology. However, what you do, and do not, commit to the public cloud is entirely your call.

To misquote George Orwell’s classic, ‘Animal Farm’: ‘All clouds are equal – but some are more equal than others’. The other key thing to remember is that not everything is for the cloud, so it’s a matter of each to its rightful place.

Information highly sensitive? Then use private clouds, so that you benefit from scalability and flexibility internally, without exposing your data to the Internet. Consider which are your crown jewels of information and what protection you have around these. Is it good enough? Should those defences be more robust?

The starting point is to look carefully at each workload when deciding which kind of cloud your data should be in. The relative merits of issues such as availability,...

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Symantec Announces New Corporate Strategy
Symantec Analyst Relations | 21 Mar 2013 | 0 comments

Symantec's CEO, Steve Bennett, on January 23rd outlined the company's priorities in addressing the unmet needs of customers to fully protect, move and manage information on multiple devices. Symantec will focus on enabling customers to keep their digital lives safe and protected through a renewed emphasis on innovation and developing new technology. Please visit the resources below for more information

New coporate strategy overview and landing page

Press Releases

Additional Materials...

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Symantec Intelligence Report: December 2012
Symantec Analyst Relations | 16 Jan 2013 | 0 comments

In December’s Symantec Intelligence Report we take a closer look at our worldwide stats on the threat landscape. For the month of December, the United States claimed the dubious honor of being the largest source of spam at 12.7%, phishing scams at 24.2%, and virus attachments at 40.9% globally. It’s not unusual for the US to top one or two of these three categories, though claiming the triple crown of risk-based distribution is a little less common.

In other country news, Norway has jumped up to become the most targeted country for phishing attacks, as we’ve determined that 1 in 81.4 emails in the country were phishing attempts in December. Norway also came in second biggest source country, distributing 20.2% of all worldwide phishing attacks. The reasons why one country would jump like this are often varied, but likely due to a concerted phishing campaign by attackers. We’re keeping an...

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Windows 8 Security Is No Magic Bullet
Gerry Egan | 14 Jan 2013 | 0 comments

Microsoft’s latest desktop operating system release has been applauded as the most secure Windows ever – incorporating features including anti-malware out of the box, boot protection against rootkits and support for self-encrypting drives. So, does this mean we no longer need to think about Windows desktop security?

That the answer is (of course) “no” should not be taken as a comment on the strides Microsoft has made. Rather, it is more an indicator of where the boundaries now lie. To state the most obvious point first, no operating system can ever be 100% secure – indeed, security company Vupen claims to already have done just that.  

Even if an operating system proves resistant to attack, the bad guys know that the weakest link is the ‘human layer’ – that is to say, the people that use...

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Taking Stock About Security

Sian John | 10 Jan 2013 | 0 comments

Yes, it’s that time of the year again, when industry analysts and commentators make their predictions about IT in general, and security in particular. We can expect all the usual – the main industry trends such as cloud and mobile will of course be in the bag, as well as potential recurrences of major security breaches – user data leaks from online sites, defacement or denial of service attacks on high-profile web sites and so on.
 


While it’s the same every year, this period is also a good moment to reflect on the security landscape and how well prepared we are for the year to come. While all of the above are symptoms, security breaches tend to be caused by people so a good starting point is to get into the heads of the perpetrators – the mad, bad and sad individuals that cause our organisations so much grief.
 


So, why do ...

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Mobile innovation is moving from hardware to software – are organisations ready?
bduckering | 03 Jan 2013 | 0 comments

Mobility is arriving at a plateau. The very fact that the iPhone 5 was met with more of a mixed reaction than previous iterations is testament to the fact that it is not enough for a device to simply be a smartphone. Indeed, it is ironic that most of the criticisms stemmed from its absence of ‘innovative’ features – NFC communications, for example.

No doubt the debate will rage on about who has stolen what feature from whom. Behind the rhetoric however is a fundamental point – that advanced mobile devices have arrived, in all shapes and sizes. Until the next major innovation in form factors, the hardware conversation is largely complete. It’s not just Apple – Samsung, Microsoft and all other players are in the same boat.

Almost inevitably, attention moves away from the platform to the applications, as the opportunity to innovate and differentiate moves up the stack. We’re not seeing any loss of appetite here, nor a slow-down...

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The ICO's new guidelines need to focus on aggregation, not anonymisation
Jon C | 20 Dec 2012 | 1 comment

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) is between a rock and several hard places. Long-castigated for being a soft touch, over the past year it has been increasingly visible in terms of the fines it imposes. These range from individual confidentiality breaches to the large-scale spamming via text with fines commensurate with the scale of the breach.

While nobody would doubt the need for regulation - and enforcement - in matters of data protection, the process followed has come under scrutiny, particularly around reporting of breaches. A recent Computer Weekly article asks whether the...

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Shining a light on web, email, social and messaging best practice
Sian John | 19 Dec 2012 | 0 comments

Do email and messaging security still matter, against the current background of social networks, consumerisation, mobile and bring-your-own-device? The answer, according to a recent report from two industry groups, is a resounding yes. However, given this rapidly changing technology landscape, the way that it matters has changed – so our behaviour needs to change accordingly, both at an individual and an organisational level.
 
The cross-vendor Messaging, Malware and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group (M3AAWG) collaborated with anti-spam organisation the London Action Plan (LAP), to produce the report. Among the contributors was our very own Eric Chien, Technical Director of the ...

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