Forrester Research published the Forrester Wave: Endpoint Encryption Q1 2015 report on January 16th, 2015. The report examined the top seven endpoint encryption vendors and evaluated how their products compared against one another. The vendors that participated in this analysis included Intel Security (McAfee), Kaspersky, Wave Systems, Novell and WinMagic. Microsoft and Dell were invited to participate, however, they withdrew from the analysis after reviewing the criteria for the study.
In order to qualify to participate in the analysis, vendors had to offer multiple encryption technologies in one product offering, including full disk/volume encryption, file level encryption and a form of media protection. In addition to these product offerings, vendors were also required to have a substantial market presence.
Symantec was rated as a Strong Performer alongside Kaspersky, Wave Systems, Novell and WinMagic. Both Sophos and Intel Security were rated as a Leader in the industry. However, Forrester reports only a modest level of satisfaction from Sophos' users. In addition, they noted that Intel's suite is one of the most expensive and its breadth of supported operating systems is lacking for folder/file encryption. Symantec had the largest market presence of all vendors that participated.
Symantec Strengths:
Forrester evaluated Symantec Endpoint Encryption, our newest offering released October 6th 2014. We received acknowledgement for taking the best-of-breed technologies from our PGP and GuardianEdge acquisitions and combining those technologies into a single console offering that includes both disk and removable media encryption. Additionally, Forrester called out our strong data loss prevention strategy through multiple data loss prevention product offerings that integrate with our encryption portfolio at an extremely attractive price point.
Areas for Improvement:
The main weakness that Forrester pointed out was our lack of support for popular hardware and native encryption technologies, such as self-encrypting drives (SEDs) and BitLocker. However, in the next release of Symantec Endpoint Encryption we will start to support native OS solutions (starting with FileVault) in addition to self-encrypting drives. This release is slated for March 2015. In the summer timeframe, we will build upon these efforts to also provide support for managing Microsoft BitLocker.
In this report, Forrester notes that some customers expressed frustration with our overall product functionality and deployment ease. Although our new Endpoint Encryption version 11 product combines best-of-breed technology from our two previous endpoint offerings – Symantec Drive Encryption and Symantec Endpoint Encryption - it does not quite have the full feature set of these products. Our 2015 roadmap is designed to address any remaining gaps.
Forrester also pointed out that our file/folder and email encryption solutions continue to be managed by a different management console. This is accurate in that our Endpoint Encryption Management Server does not support PGP keys that are used for Email Encryption and File & Folder Encryption and this will remain the case for the foreseeable future.
Lastly, while Forrester noted the lack of mobile OS support for some of our endpoint encryption functions, we do plan on providing more support for email encryption on iOS and Android platforms in 2015.
Evaluation Criteria Used:
Each vendor was evaluated against 52 criteria, grouped into 3 high-level buckets:
- Current offering – strength of current product offering
- Strategy – viability and execution of strategy, including market experience, future vision, integration strategy, global presence and engineering staff
- Market presence – size of bubble represents presence in endpoint encryption market, based on metrics, install base, revenue and partners.
For full details of Forrester’s findings, you can download the report here.