Symantec Unveils New Intrusion Prevention Appliance

Symantec Network Security 7100 Series to Offer Unique One Click to Prevention Capability

Hong Kong -- 24 August 2004 - Symantec Corp. (NASDAQ: SYMC), the global leader in information security, today announced Symantec Network Security 7100 Series, its first line of intrusion prevention appliances offering multi-gigabit intrusion prevention and the innovative One Click to Prevention capability.

Symantec Network Security 7100 Series can easily be transitioned from a comprehensive monitoring device to a powerful prevention tool with a single mouse click, allowing customers to switch between modes based on their security policy. The One Click to Prevention is transparent to any Ethernet Network, ensuring business continuity while providing optimum protection against security threats.

"Technologies have emerged that enhance network security by enabling enterprises to block attacks to protect their networks and IT resources. Firewalls, vulnerability management and intrusion prevention systems counter threats posed by worms, increased hacking activity and enterprise insiders," said Richard Stiennon, Vice President, Gartner. "Further, today's intrusion prevention systems must also move beyond simple signature-based approaches to support policy-, behaviour- and anomaly-based detection algorithms."

Symantec Network Security 7100 Series leverages the new Intrusion Mitigation Unified Network Engine (IMUNE), which redefines comprehensive network protection by combining multiple detection technologies such as protocol anomaly detection, vulnerability attack interception, signature recognition, denial-of-service and scan detection, and IDS evasion detection. A revolutionary approach to detecting and blocking today's ever-changing security threats in real time, the IMUNE architecture stops worms from propagating and blocks malicious threats with the highest level of accuracy. The IMUNE architecture protects customers against intrusions and malicious code, network infrastructure attacks, application exploits, scans, probes, denial-of-service attempts, backdoors, buffer overflow attempts and blended threats like MS Blaster and SQL Slammer.

Consisting of three models (7120, 7160 and 7161), the highly scalable Symantec Network Security 7100 Series offers varying levels of performance to meet the different bandwidth needs of customers. The models can range from 50Mbps to 2Gbps across as many as eight network segments on a single appliance.

"Our customers have told us that they want security investments to proactively support their business, they need rapid seamless deployment and overnight results from a solution that simply stops attacks before they do damage," said Andy Norton, Director of Product Marketing, Symantec Corp. "Symantec Network Security 7100 Series is the first appliance to deliver the security intelligence from the world's leading response organisation and premier global early warning system automatically into a customers business' to protect them in advance of emerging threats."

To ensure the most up-to-date protection and reduce total cost of ownership, Symantec Network Security 7100 Series allows organisations to download Symantec Security Response's most current security updates through Symantec LiveUpdate, providing customers real-time protection against the latest threats. Symantec Security Response, the world's leading Internet security research and support organisation, leverages sophisticated threat and early warning systems to provide customers with comprehensive, global, 24x7 Internet security expertise to proactively guard against today's blended Internet threats.

For customers interested in having Symantec serve as an extension of their internal security operations, Symantec Managed Security Services can remotely monitor and manage Symantec Network Security 7100 Series. Symantec Managed Security Services leverages global intelligence to offer fast and accurate analysis of security data to protect customers against emerging threats and reduce overall security risk. Its 24x7 real-time services enhance an organisation's information security posture through continuous monitoring and management, expert analysis, and immediate response to potential security threats.

Symantec Network Security 7100 Series is a component of Symantec Intrusion Protection, which offers organisations the appropriate solution to anticipate, detect, prevent and mitigate attacks from internal and external intruders. Other key components of Symantec Intrusion Protection include Symantec ManHunt, Symantec Host IDS and Symantec Gateway Security.

Licensing and Availability
Symantec Network Security 7100 Series will be offered in three different models (7120, 7160 and 7161) to accommodate varying performance needs and port configurations. Flexible licensing enables customers to purchase the solution that best meets their security needs. Customers also receive up to one year of telephone support, advanced replacement, software upgrade insurance and content updates included with the licences.

Symantec Network Security 7100 Series is scheduled to be available in August through Symantec's worldwide network of value-added resellers, distributors and systems integrators. Organisations can locate Symantec's resellers and distributors in their areas by visiting https://partnernet.symantec.com/internet/locator/Locator01.asp.

NOTE TO EDITORS: If you would like additional information on Symantec Corporation and its products, please view the Symantec Press Center at http://www.symantec.com/PressCenter/ on Symantec's Web site. All prices noted are in US dollars and are valid only in the United States.

Symantec and the Symantec logo are trademarks or registered trademarks, in the United States and certain other countries, of Symantec Corporation. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of the individual companies and are respectfully acknowledged.

FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENT: This press release contains forward-looking statements, including forecasts of future revenue and earnings per share, expected activities, 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; the anticipation of the growth of certain market segments, particularly enterprise security; the positioning of Symantec's products in those segments; the competitive environment in the software industry; 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 10-Q. Symantec assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking information contained in this press release except as otherwise required by law.