While every vendor claims market leadership, the industry benchmark of leadership is an objective third-party comparison. Independent assessments and lab tests confirm Symantec's leadership in the ATP market.
Getting Beyond the Noise
Technology products often are overhyped, and products that address advanced threats are no exception. Advanced Threat Protection players proliferate in the market, and self-proclaimed market and technology leadership is common. Customers rely on independent sources to cut through the noise and provide a clear picture of what vendors have to offer.
Symantec has demonstrated leadership in the Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) market with multiple independent assessments.
Top Player Radicati Advanced Persistent Threat Protection Market Quadrant*
Radicati Group has published a deep-dive assessment of the APT Protection market, and the overall leader is Symantec Advanced Threat Protection.
The Radicati APT Protection MQ report is a comprehensive assessment of vendors that analyzes functionality, strategy, customer support, and more.
The report assesses vendors on critical criteria including:
- Deployment options
- Malware detection
- Web and Email Security
- Forensics and Analysis of zero-day and advanced threats
- Sandboxing and Quarantining
- Remediation
The extensive analysis provides an independent source for customer evaluation.
In the 2017 report to compare APT Protection vendors in detail, Radicati assessed Symantec as the overall leader and the highest ranked Top Player.
Figure 1
In Radicati's review of the APT Protection market, the analyst firm cited as one as Symantec's strength our integrated ATP solution that covers critical control points including Endpoint, Email, Web and Network threat vectors. The ability to add visibility and threat correlation for multiple control points is essential. Firms that invest in point products that focus on a single threat vector may find the task of integrating and managing a disparate set of products costly.
Radicati highlighted this strength stating, "Symantec provides a fully integrated portfolio of solutions to guard against threats across all vectors including endpoint, network, web, email, applications and more."
Just as important as addressing control points is providing a multi-layered approach to protection. Radicati recognized Symantec's integrated solutions support the entire threat lifecycle. Symantec's integrated cyber defense approach includes Network Forensics via Symantec Security Analytics giving customers real-time content inspection and sophisticated anomaly detection for all network traffic including SSL traffic (using Symantec SSL Visibility).
The Radicati report highlighted Symantec Malware Analysis for its customizable hybrid sandbox and noted that Symantec’s cloud sandbox offers virtual and physical execution modes to thwart threats designed to be “VM aware.”
Lastly, Radicati cited Symantec ATP’s Endpoint Detection and Response capability that ensures stealthy threats can be exposed and any impacts of a breach quickly resolved across all impacted endpoints.
SE Labs Network Security Appliance Test
In July, SE Labs published the lab results comparing several popular network security appliances including Symantec ATP. The test used real-world threats that were active on the internet at the time of the test. The threats utilized in the analysis were web-based, malware downloads and targeted attacks.
SE labs found that Symantec ATP had the highest rating for Total Accuracy a measure that combines the effectiveness of threat protection and the handling of non-malicious objects (99%). In addition, SE Labs found that Symantec protected against 100% of the public web-based threats, malware downloads and targeted attacks used in the test.
Symantec ATP received SE Labs AAA Award for strong overall performance in the test.
Figure 2
IDC MarketScape on Endpoint Specialized Threat Analysis and Protection 2017**
In another major analyst report, the IDC MarketScape named Symantec a leader, citing the combination of technology and services that support threat detection and remediation of known and targeted attacks.
Among the strengths highlighted in the report, stating "Symantec Advanced Threat Protection is tightly integrated into SEP 14 and provides incident responders with complete visibility through a single agent and the ability to conduct active threat hunting and live response on endpoint devices."
The Bottom Line
Claiming you're a leader is one thing, many vendors make this claim.
Having an independent assessment from Radicati that your solution is the highest ranked among Top Players for APT Protection and has the highest rating for total accuracy in real-world lab tests from SE Labs are the kind of validations customers should consider when comparing vendors.
Figure 3
Download your free copy of the 2017 Radicati APT Protection Market Quadrant Report and SE Labs Network Security Appliance Test
Related content:
Symantec Advanced Threat Protection Solution
Symantec Endpoint Detection and Response
Symantec Content & Malware Analysis
Symantec Security Analytics
Symantec SSL Visibility
* Endpoint Security - Market Quadrant 2016, Radicati, Nov 2016
** IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Endpoint Specialized Threat Analysis and Protection 2017 Vendor Assessment (Doc # US42385717, April 2017)