• Home
• GOVERNMENT CXO
• E-GOVERNMENT
• CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
• TAX AND REVENUE MANAGEMENT
• GOVERNMENT PROCUREMENT
• GREEN GOVERNMENT
• GOVERNMENT DATA MANAGEMENT
• GOVERNMENT SECURITY
• GOVERNMENT CLOUD
• GOVERNMENT ANALYTICS
• GOVERNMENT GIS
• CONNECTED GOVERNMENT
• DIGITAL INCLUSION
• EDUCATION IT
• HEALTHCARE IT

Government Security, Technology

How to get better value security: Symantec

15 September 2009

No one ever said that managing and protecting every device in an enterprise would be easy. But has the job ever been as challenging as it is today?

Photos

View photos

Related Articles

• Singapore to set up National Cyber Security Centre
• How to make telehealth more relevant
• South Korea outlines cyber security strategy

Related Categories

• GOVERNMENT SECURITY
• TECHNOLOGY

From this Section

• SPOTLIGHT

Think about it: the typical enterprise now contains a steadily increasing number of smartphones, peripherals, PDAs, laptops, and desktops. Symantec estimates that four out of five companies have lost data through laptops, and half of all companies have lost data through USB drives. Then there are the servers and gateways.

In general, enterprises have responded to this development by adopting what can be called a scattered approach to security, drawing on various technologies from different vendors. But a scattered approach to enterprise security is problematic. It’s costly to implement, a pain to manage, and not as effective as it needs to be.

Read on to learn if you are getting the best security for your money.

Proliferating threats
The IT threat landscape has changed dramatically over the past few years. It used to be that the majority of attacks were meant simply to make headline news. Today, attacks have become far more sophisticated and stealthy, targeting specific organisations to reap financial gain. Professional hackers continuously develop new tactics to gain unauthorized access to an organization’s systems and information. One gauge of the growing sophistication of attacks is the appearance of blended threats, which integrate multiple attack methods such as worms, Trojan horses, and zero-day threats.

For example, as many as 12 million PCs were recently infected by the Conficker worm, according to security researchers. This was an exceptionally persistent, aggressive threat. It was able to spread over shared flash-memory drives, and the most recent variant even blocked access to Web sites of security-software vendors. Symantec researchers said Conficker had created a “secure infrastructure for cybercrime.” On April 1, the worm was to have used a communications system that would have been more difficult for security researchers to interrupt.

The current economic downturn further complicates matters, making businesses even more susceptible to attacks. Angry ex-employees and hackers hungry for income are finding ever more creative — and destructive — ways to break into systems.

To combat the growing threats against their IT infrastructures, organisations have acquired and deployed a variety of security products from a variety of vendors. But deploying these security products individually is not only time-consuming, it also increases IT complexity and costs. Organizations then need to provide management, training, and support for a variety of different endpoint security solutions. Also, differing technologies can often work against one another or impede system performance due to high resource consumption. In many cases, the end result has been overlap, protection gaps, and increased licensing costs.

A comprehensive approach to security
With IT organisations worldwide facing severe budget restrictions, they’re looking for places to cut, and security teams aren’t exempt from the pressure. Everyone is being asked to do more with less. By implementing unified management and protection solutions, organisations can simplify the operation of their protection strategy while reducing costs with a single vendor.

Symantec Protection Suite Enterprise Edition creates a protected endpoint and messaging environment that is secure against today’s complex malware, data loss, and spam threats, and allows quick system and data recovery in the event of failure. It enables organisations to reduce the cost of securing their environment and more effectively manage the risks inherent in today’s IT infrastructures with proven endpoint, messaging security, and system recovery technologies.

Symantec Protection Suite Enterprise Edition provides advanced threat prevention that protects endpoints - laptops, desktops, servers, and mobile devices - from targeted attacks and attacks not seen before. It includes technologies that automatically analyse application behaviors and network communications to detect and block suspicious activities, as well as administrative control features that allow organisations to deny specific device and application activities deemed as high risk.

In addition, the suite features built-in software-based network access control to ensure endpoints remain in compliance with IT policy regardless of where or how they connect to the network.

Symantec Protection Suite provides antispam and antivirus protection for both inbound and outbound email and instant messaging. Its messaging security components can be deployed both at the messaging server level on Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Domino and at the gateway level with physical or virtual appliance-based security. Advanced content filtering and data loss prevention help organizations control sensitive data, reduce the risks associated with data loss, and meet regulatory compliance and corporate governance demands.

Symantec Protection Suite Enterprise Edition also includes disk-based system recovery for Windows-based desktops and laptops, enabling businesses to recover from system loss or disasters in minutes, not hours or days.

Conclusion
Managing and protecting every device in an enterprise isn’t easy. But an enterprise puts itself at risk if its IT organisation lacks the visibility to protect the business’ sensitive information, wherever it may be. Such visibility is not possible with a patchwork of security point products.

To ensure that their information is secure and truly protected, enterprises instead require a comprehensive protection strategy that includes endpoint security, messaging security, and backup and recovery.

Symantec Protection Suite Enterprise Edition is a combination of award-winning technologies that enable organisations to protect, manage, and automatically control the assets most crucial to their business. With Symantec Protection Suite, organisations can lower their licensing costs while simplifying their security operations.

Visit https://scm.symantec.com/es/en/ to find out how you can Protect Today, Secure Your Future.