Symantec Completes LIRIC Associates Acquisition

TORONTO, ON - October 12, 2004 - Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC), the global leader in information security, today announced that the acquisition of LIRIC Associates, originally announced on Sept. 17, 2004, has been completed.

LIRIC's services range from vulnerability and risk assessment to secure system design to operational security policies and its consultants and engineers all have a minimum of 20 years' experience in their field. Symantec will now focus on integrating LIRIC's consultants into its Global Professional Services team, expanding the capacity and capability of that group in EMEA.

About Symantec
Symantec, 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.

Symantec's Canadian operations are headquartered in Toronto with offices in Montreal, Ottawa, Calgary and Vancouver. For more information on Symantec products or current promotions, contact the Canadian office at (416) 441-3676 or access Symantec's Canadian Web site at www.symantec.ca. Symantec is an active member of the Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft (CAAST).

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FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENT: This press release contains forward-looking statements, including forecasts of future revenue and earnings per share, expected industry patterns, and other financial and business results that involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements to differ materially from results expressed or implied by this press release. Such risk factors include, among others: the sustainability of recent growth rates, particularly in consumer products; whether certain market segments, particularly enterprise security, grow as anticipated; the positioning of Symantec's products in those segments; the competitive environment in the software industry; ability to integrate acquired companies and technology; ability to retain key employees; ability to successfully combine product offerings and customer acceptance of combined products; general market conditions, fluctuations in currency exchange rates, changes to operating systems and product strategy by vendors of operating systems; and whether Symantec can successfully develop new products and the degree to which these gain market acceptance. Actual results may differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements in this press release. Additional information concerning these and other risk factors is contained in the Risk Factors sections of Symantec's previously filed Form 10-K and Form 10-Q.