Symantec Introduces New Vulnerability Assessment Solution

Symantec Vulnerability Assessment Provides Vulnerability Identification and Prioritisation to Proactively Secure Systems at Risk.

SYDNEY --NSW - May 14, 2003 -- Symantec Corp. (NASDAQ: SYMC), the world leader in Internet security, today announced the release of Symantec Vulnerability Assessment, which provides greater control of the network infrastructure through the identification and prioritisation of vulnerabilities and by providing extensive information on remediation actions.

"Many organisations are unable to identify vulnerabilities in their systems and applications, opening their networks up to malicious Internet activities. Symantec monitored vulnerabilities over the past year and found over 2,500 vulnerabilities were detected, an increase of 81.4 per cent over 2001," said Andy Norton, Group Product Manager, Symantec Asia Pacific. "By implementing Symantec Vulnerability Assessment, customers can manage the control and complexity of their systems and proactively identify and rectify vulnerable systems to secure their systems and applications."

Symantec Vulnerability Assessment determines vulnerable systems and applications across an enterprise faster and more thoroughly than individual network-based scanners. It also prioritises vulnerabilities in terms of urgency, impact rating and remediation, allowing staff to focus on the most critical vulnerabilities first.

Symantec Vulnerability Assessment is also the first vulnerability assessment solution to leverage the extensive, industry-leading vulnerability database from Symantec, which is indexed to identify threats recognised by CVE and Bugtraq in order to allow administrators to focus their resources on relevant, high-impact vulnerabilities and attacks. Symantec Security Response delivers up-to-the-minute vulnerability signatures and detailed remediation steps, including links to patches and online knowledge bases.

Symantec's LiveUpdate technology is integrated into Symantec Vulnerability Assessment to provide rapid, automatic deployment of new security updates and modules, helping security professionals understand vulnerabilities and their potential impacts, and apply appropriate safeguards and patches to effectively repair the vulnerabilities in their IT environments.

"Documented system vulnerabilities are increasing dramatically each year. Proactive measures need to become an integral role for organisations to prevent the loss of valuable information and protect business productivity," added Andy Norton. "Symantec Vulnerability Assessment identifies and prioritises systems so that organisations can proactively prevent the exploitation of potential breaches that threaten the confidentiality, integrity and availability of systems."

In addition, Symantec Vulnerability Assessment can be tightly integrated with Symantec Incident Manager 2.0 to correlate vulnerabilities and convert them into actionable incidents, which reduces false positives since administrators can readily focus on the systems that are most vulnerable to an attack.

Availability
Symantec Vulnerability Assessment is available through Symantec's worldwide network of value-added authorised resellers, distributors and systems integrators.

About Symantec
Symantec (Nasdaq: SYMC), the world leader in Internet security technology, provides a broad range of content and network security software and appliance solutions to individuals, enterprises and service providers. The company is a leading provider of client, gateway and server security solutions for virus protection, firewall and virtual private network, vulnerability management, intrusion detection, Internet content and e-mail filtering, remote management technologies and security services to enterprises and service providers around the world. Symantec's Norton brand of consumer security products is a leader in worldwide retail sales and industry awards. Headquartered in Cupertino, Calif., Symantec has worldwide operations in 38 countries. For more information, please visit www.symantec.com.au

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