IDC Report Says Symantec Outpaces Market Growth to Extend World Leadership in Secure Content Management

Cupertino --Calif - 23 July, 2003 -- Symantec the world leader in Internet security, today announced that a new report by information technology research firm IDC placed Symantec as the world's leading vendor for secure content management (SCM) for the third straight year. Symantec's growth rate of 46 per cent in 2002 versus 2001 eclipsed the 34 per cent growth rate for the SCM market overall, placing Symantec at the top of list of 32 of the world's largest security vendors referenced in the report.

According to the report Worldwide Secure Content Management Forecast Update and Competitive Vendor Shares, 2002-2007, Symantec increased its lead in the share of the worldwide SCM software market to 31 per cent. The growth of Symantec's market share was underscored by the expansion of its lead over the second-place company from less than six per cent in 2001 to almost 11 per cent in 2002.

"Because viruses are arriving in the form of blended threats that exploit a number of different vulnerabilities and attack through different methods at the same time, vendors need to have an integrated approach to their security networks," said Chris Christensen, program vice president of Security Products and Infrastructure Software Overview Research for IDC. "Such an approach coordinates policies with a combination of anti-virus, real-time behaviour analysis, messaging security and Web filtering solutions to form a complete defence against attacks."

Secure content management, according to IDC, includes anti-virus, Web filtering and messaging security software. The anti-virus segment represents the largest component of the total SCM market with 81 per cent share. According to IDC, Symantec expanded its share of the worldwide anti-virus market to 37 per cent, growing 48 per cent in the last year, more than double the growth rate of the nearest competitor. In fact, Symantec outpaced the overall anti-virus market growth rate at 31 per cent. The report also noted that Symantec also experienced 29 per cent growth in the messaging security field, recognised as the fastest growing element of the SCM market.

"Recent attacks such as Code Red and SQL Slammer show that blended threats are not only growing but also propagating at a rate much faster than attacks from a year ago such as Bugbear and Klez," said John Schwarz, president and chief operating officer, Symantec. "We anticipate that these attacks will grow in frequency and ferocity and encourage our customers to be vigilant about running security precautions across every tier of their network at the server, gateway, and client levels."

Overall, IDC predicts a compound annual growth rate of 19 per cent over the next five years for the SCM market as a whole, growing from the current level of US$2.7 billion in 2002 to US$6.4 billion in 2007. Furthermore, IDC research indicates spending on the security segments of IT budgets will increase in 2003 and 2004.

The IDC study examines the SCM market from 2001 to 2007, and forecasts market growth and trends for vendor revenue. Worldwide market sizes are provided for 2002, with trends from 2001, and a growth forecast is made for the SCM market for 2003 through 2007. A competitive analysis for vendors' revenue and market shares is provided for 2002. The study also profiles leading vendors and the characteristics those vendors will need to be successful and continue growth and expansion.

About Symantec
Symantec Corp. (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 36 countries. For more information, please visit www.symantec.com.au

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