By Shaun Nichols
7 April 2009 02:16PM
Symantec's new chief executive has officially taken over..
The security and storage firm said that former chief operating officer Enrique Salem had formally assumed the chief executive and company president roles.
Outgoing chief John Thompson is remaining with the company as board chairman.
The move was first announced in November, but the official transition was delayed until the end of the company's fiscal year on April 4.
"Through that process, Enrique emerged as the right person to lead the company and I am confident in his ability to continue to drive the success of our team," Thompson was quoted as saying in November.
Salem will be the company's first new chief executive in more than ten years, rising to the position from the chief operating officer role.
Salem had first joined Symantec as a lead engineer when the company acquired Norton Computing in 1990. He later became the company's first chief technology officer before leaving in 1999 to join Ask Jeeves.
Salem returned to the company in 2004 when Symantec purchased Brightmail.
Copyright © 2009 vnunet.com
Showing posts with label Symantec. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Symantec. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Enrique Salem takes over at Symantec
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Report: Symantec Report on the Underground Economy: November, 2008
Symantec report page : LinkSecrets of the underground economy
By Kathryn Small 1 December 2008 01:11PM
In IRC channels and web-based forums, the underground economy is thriving, according to the latest year-long report by Symantec. Find out how much a botnet or a set of credit card details would cost you.
The ‘underground economy’ refers to commercial cybercrime activity – specifically, the purchase and sale of fraudulent goods and services. Items for sale might include sold credit card data, bank account credentials, email accounts, and other data.
Services might include cashiers who can transfer funds from stolen accounts into true currency, phishing and scam page hosting, and job advertisements for roles such as scam developers or phishing partners.
The value of the total advertised goods on underground economy servers during the twelve-month period was more than US$276 million.
Information is bought and sold on IRC channels and web forums. Sometimes sellers set up shop on legitimate servers, which makes it harder for police to shut them down.
The underground economy is highly diverse. “The top ten servers control the top 11 per cent of the revenue,” said Craig Scroggie, VP and MD of Symantec Asia Pacific.
Sixty-three (63) per cent of sellers were offering online credit as payment, using wire transfers, or funnelling money through online currencies such as Linden dollars or World of Warcraft gold.
Credit card information was the most highly prized data, accounting for 31 per cent of everything that was sold during the survey period. That included credit card numbers, credit cards with CVV2 numbers, and credit card dumps. It was also the most requested category, making up 24 per cent of all goods requested.
Credit card details might be as cheap as US$0.10 per card, ranging up to US$25, while credit cards with CVV2 numbers ranged from US$0.50 to US$12.
“The thing about credit cards is that it could cost you as little as 10 cents, but the average advertised stolen credit card limit observed by Symantec is more than US$4,000. So it’s an incredible return on investment,” said Scroggie.
“We calculated that the potential worth of all credit cards advertised during the reporting period was US$5.3 billion.”
Credit card information is popular because it’s easy to obtain and easy to use for fraud, explained Scroggie.
“Credit cards are easy to use for online shopping, and it’s often difficult for merchants or credit card providers to identify and address fraudulent transactions before fraudsters complete these transactions and receive their goods.”
Australia has a disproportionately high number of credit card transactions every year. Scroggie explained that in Australia there are 14 million credit cards in circulation, performing 1.4 billion transactions in the last year. By contrast, the UK is three times as large, but had less than 1.8 billion transactions.
“Australia’s always been an early and strong adopter of technology, and we’re an early adopter from a market stand-point. We have high credit card usage relative to other strong economies.”Next, fraudsters traded in financial accounts, at 20 per cent of the total. Stolen bank account information sells for between $10 and $1,000, but the average advertised stolen bank account balance is nearly $40,000. Symantec calculated that the total value of bank accounts advertised as US$1.7 billion.
The average price of a botnet was $25, while the price of phishing scam hosting, keystroke loggers or screen scrapers was $10.
Desktop computer games made up 49 per cent of pirated software, which Scroggie said directly correlated to retail sales in the legitimate market. Following that was commercial software suites such as Adobe’s Creative Suite. “There was a large number of pirated games but the average retail price of games is low – around $50. So there’s a large amount of piracy, but not a large amount of money.”
The underground economy is spread out across the world, ranging from loose collections of individuals to organised and sophisticated groups. North America hosted the largest number of servers, with 45 per cent of the total; Europe/Middle East/Africa hosted 38 per cent; Asia/Pacific with 12 per cent; and Latin America with 5 per cent.
The report noted that the geographical locations of underground economy servers are constantly changing to evade detection.
Scroggie said businesses and individuals could take simple steps to protecting themselves from online fraud.
“They can protect themselves by ensuring they have messaging filtering, a defensive depth strategy, multiple mutual overlapping or complementary software, such as anti-viral, anti-spyware, anti-malware and anti-phishing.
“You can buy a combination of these technologies from reputable security vendors.”
Actual download link for report: Here (PDF file)
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Symantec adds Messagelabs to Christmas shopping basket
Symantec to acquire MessageLabs, bolster SaaS
by David M Williams Thursday, 09 October 2008
Symantec Corporation, producer of the popular Symantec Anti-Virus corporate suite and of the less-than-popular Norton consumer product, has today announced its intention to acquire global e-mail-filtering company MessageLabs. The move signals Symantec's growth as a provider of SaaS. Symantec has been on the acquisition trail for several years with other notable purchases being Veritas - of backup fame - and Altiris - known for their enterprise network management and help-desk suite.
MessageLabs differs from the products Symantec is best known for due to its Software as a Service (SaaS) model. That is, MessageLabs requires no infrastructure or maintenance within your network save to redirect your incoming mail to hit their servers, not your own.
The MessageLabs machinery scrubs and cleans your inbound e-mail stream, delivering a spam- and virus-free feed to your corporate mail server.
MessageLabs report their customers include major financial institutions and legal firms as well as governments.
Additional MessageLabs services include a web proxy element and e-mail archiving.
In one sense MessageLabs was a competitor to Symantec's existing mail security product. Yet, the acquisition appears little to do with shutting down a competitor and more about bolstering Symantec's overall presence in the growing cloud space.
The CEO of MessageLabs, Adrian Chamberlain, said the interest by Symantec proved MessageLab's SaaS model worked and that the company was a leader in its field.
Chamberlain stated at the close of the acquisition Symantec would launch a new SaaS arm which combined MessageLabs and the existing Symantec solutions for online storage, online backup and remote access. This new arm will be lead by the MessageLabs management team thus giving their division a stronger product from day one.
The purchase price will be $USD 695 million but at this time the expected completion date has not been advised, no doubt with due diligence still in progress.
Messagelabs Link
Symantec is expanding is's business but downsizing its workforce.
Seeing Tough Times Ahead, Symantec Plans Layoffs
Robert McMillan, IDG News ServiceThursday, October 30, 2008 6:10 PM PDT
Anticipating a slowdown in IT spending, Symantec expects to begin laying off employees next month.
Symantec isn't saying exactly how many jobs it will cut, but on Wednesday Chief Financial Officer James Beer said that the company is looking to trim about 4.5 percent of the cost of its workforce. Separately, Symantec is also outsourcing some of the work done by its IT and finance departments, he said during a conference call with financial analysts.
Symantec has not yet determined how many cuts it will make to its workforce of 17,800 employees, but the layoffs will affect staff in all regions, said Cris Paden, a company spokesman. "We'll be notifying employees next month," he said.
On Nov. 1, Hewlett-Packard's EDS division will start taking over some of the company's IT operations, and IT and finance employees will be moved off the company payroll over the next 12 months, Paden said. Those reductions have been planned for months, and are separate from the cuts announced Wednesday.
Symantec's stock [SYMC] dropped nearly 18 percent Thursday on the company's sober economic outlook and its reduced earnings expectations.
Starting in the last weeks of September, Symantec saw some "hesitation from some of our customers when it came to finalizing commitments," Beer said in an interview.
"We did see some pulling back," he added. "It was an effect that we saw in different parts of our customer base around the world."
by David M Williams Thursday, 09 October 2008
Symantec Corporation, producer of the popular Symantec Anti-Virus corporate suite and of the less-than-popular Norton consumer product, has today announced its intention to acquire global e-mail-filtering company MessageLabs. The move signals Symantec's growth as a provider of SaaS. Symantec has been on the acquisition trail for several years with other notable purchases being Veritas - of backup fame - and Altiris - known for their enterprise network management and help-desk suite.
MessageLabs differs from the products Symantec is best known for due to its Software as a Service (SaaS) model. That is, MessageLabs requires no infrastructure or maintenance within your network save to redirect your incoming mail to hit their servers, not your own.
The MessageLabs machinery scrubs and cleans your inbound e-mail stream, delivering a spam- and virus-free feed to your corporate mail server.
MessageLabs report their customers include major financial institutions and legal firms as well as governments.
Additional MessageLabs services include a web proxy element and e-mail archiving.
In one sense MessageLabs was a competitor to Symantec's existing mail security product. Yet, the acquisition appears little to do with shutting down a competitor and more about bolstering Symantec's overall presence in the growing cloud space.
The CEO of MessageLabs, Adrian Chamberlain, said the interest by Symantec proved MessageLab's SaaS model worked and that the company was a leader in its field.
Chamberlain stated at the close of the acquisition Symantec would launch a new SaaS arm which combined MessageLabs and the existing Symantec solutions for online storage, online backup and remote access. This new arm will be lead by the MessageLabs management team thus giving their division a stronger product from day one.
The purchase price will be $USD 695 million but at this time the expected completion date has not been advised, no doubt with due diligence still in progress.
Messagelabs Link
Symantec is expanding is's business but downsizing its workforce.
Seeing Tough Times Ahead, Symantec Plans Layoffs
Robert McMillan, IDG News ServiceThursday, October 30, 2008 6:10 PM PDT
Anticipating a slowdown in IT spending, Symantec expects to begin laying off employees next month.
Symantec isn't saying exactly how many jobs it will cut, but on Wednesday Chief Financial Officer James Beer said that the company is looking to trim about 4.5 percent of the cost of its workforce. Separately, Symantec is also outsourcing some of the work done by its IT and finance departments, he said during a conference call with financial analysts.
Symantec has not yet determined how many cuts it will make to its workforce of 17,800 employees, but the layoffs will affect staff in all regions, said Cris Paden, a company spokesman. "We'll be notifying employees next month," he said.
On Nov. 1, Hewlett-Packard's EDS division will start taking over some of the company's IT operations, and IT and finance employees will be moved off the company payroll over the next 12 months, Paden said. Those reductions have been planned for months, and are separate from the cuts announced Wednesday.
Symantec's stock [SYMC] dropped nearly 18 percent Thursday on the company's sober economic outlook and its reduced earnings expectations.
Starting in the last weeks of September, Symantec saw some "hesitation from some of our customers when it came to finalizing commitments," Beer said in an interview.
"We did see some pulling back," he added. "It was an effect that we saw in different parts of our customer base around the world."
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Human error and hardware theft are the two main causes of data breaches
Data breaches caused by human error, hardware theft
By Kathryn Small
21 October 2008 05:00PM
Human error and hardware theft are the two main causes of data breaches, according to Symantec’s recent survey into Data Loss Prevention.
The global security, storage and systems management company surveyed 156 Australian companies with 100 or more employees. Results were sent in from IT managers and C-level executives. The majority of respondents represented businesses with a financial turnover of $10-$500 million.
The survey’s headline result is that 79 per cent of respondents have experienced some form of data breach, and 40 per cent have experienced anywhere from six to 20 known data breaches in the past five years.
Further, 59 per cent of respondents suspect that they have experienced undetected data breaches, with many considering it “impossible” to catch every attempted breach.
Respondents lost different kinds of data, including customer records (55 per cent); employee records (48 per cent); intellectual property (43 per cent); commercially sensitive information (35 per cent); bank and credit card details (21 per cent) and financial information (20 per cent).
Lost or stolen laptops were the top cause of data breaches, at 45 per cent. “Respondents estimated that the average cost of a data breach was the same as replacing a lost laptop,” said Steve Martin, Mid Market Manager Pacific. “But I believe that’s too low, since it doesn’t take into account the potential value of the data.”
Lost mobile phones or portable devices also weighed in at 30 per cent. “A phone is the easiest thing to lose, and the easiest thing to steal,” said Martin. “Whenever I ask groups if they have email access on their phones, and whether their phone is password protected, the second number is always very low.”
The other key cause of data breaches was accidental human error (42 per cent). Craig Scroggie, VP and MD Pacific, cited the case of a restaurant which accidentally emailed 3,500 customers a copy of their client database, containing names, addresses and dates of birth.
Malicious attacks included hacked systems (29 per cent), malicious insiders (28 per cent), paper records being smuggled out of an organisation (26 per cent) and malicious code infiltrating systems (24 per cent).
“Today’s organisations have no walls and information can be anywhere, so securing the perimeter is no longer adequate. Additionally, many organisations believe that confidential information is most at risk from malicious acts when employees are mobile and not connected to the corporate network,” said Scroggie.
Among intentional security breaches of company secrets or intellectual property, 77 per cent said that data was copied to removable storage devices, and 51 per cent said that printed paper records were removed from the premises.
Other methods of moving stolen data included email or instant messaging (41 per cent), posting to public websites (26 per cent) and copying or photographing confidential data onto mobile phones or PDAs (21 per cent).
Scroggie emphasised that Data Loss Prevention required a holistic approach to protect customers, brands and intellectual property.
“We can stop these problems today,” said Scroggie. “We have the ability to discover, monitor and protect confidential data.”
By Kathryn Small
21 October 2008 05:00PM
Human error and hardware theft are the two main causes of data breaches, according to Symantec’s recent survey into Data Loss Prevention.
The global security, storage and systems management company surveyed 156 Australian companies with 100 or more employees. Results were sent in from IT managers and C-level executives. The majority of respondents represented businesses with a financial turnover of $10-$500 million.
The survey’s headline result is that 79 per cent of respondents have experienced some form of data breach, and 40 per cent have experienced anywhere from six to 20 known data breaches in the past five years.
Further, 59 per cent of respondents suspect that they have experienced undetected data breaches, with many considering it “impossible” to catch every attempted breach.
Respondents lost different kinds of data, including customer records (55 per cent); employee records (48 per cent); intellectual property (43 per cent); commercially sensitive information (35 per cent); bank and credit card details (21 per cent) and financial information (20 per cent).
Lost or stolen laptops were the top cause of data breaches, at 45 per cent. “Respondents estimated that the average cost of a data breach was the same as replacing a lost laptop,” said Steve Martin, Mid Market Manager Pacific. “But I believe that’s too low, since it doesn’t take into account the potential value of the data.”
Lost mobile phones or portable devices also weighed in at 30 per cent. “A phone is the easiest thing to lose, and the easiest thing to steal,” said Martin. “Whenever I ask groups if they have email access on their phones, and whether their phone is password protected, the second number is always very low.”
The other key cause of data breaches was accidental human error (42 per cent). Craig Scroggie, VP and MD Pacific, cited the case of a restaurant which accidentally emailed 3,500 customers a copy of their client database, containing names, addresses and dates of birth.
Malicious attacks included hacked systems (29 per cent), malicious insiders (28 per cent), paper records being smuggled out of an organisation (26 per cent) and malicious code infiltrating systems (24 per cent).
“Today’s organisations have no walls and information can be anywhere, so securing the perimeter is no longer adequate. Additionally, many organisations believe that confidential information is most at risk from malicious acts when employees are mobile and not connected to the corporate network,” said Scroggie.
Among intentional security breaches of company secrets or intellectual property, 77 per cent said that data was copied to removable storage devices, and 51 per cent said that printed paper records were removed from the premises.
Other methods of moving stolen data included email or instant messaging (41 per cent), posting to public websites (26 per cent) and copying or photographing confidential data onto mobile phones or PDAs (21 per cent).
Scroggie emphasised that Data Loss Prevention required a holistic approach to protect customers, brands and intellectual property.
“We can stop these problems today,” said Scroggie. “We have the ability to discover, monitor and protect confidential data.”
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
PC Tools to be poor man's Norton
Liam Tung, ZDNet.com.au
28 August 2008 04:16 PM
Computer security giant Symantec said it would not integrate the software of recent acquisition PC Tools into its mainstream Norton suite, instead using the products as its low-cost option for countries such as India and China.
"The goal right now is to look at emerging markets. We'd like to see PC Tools take emerging markets — countries like Brazil, Russia, India, China," said Symantec's VP of consumer engineering, Rowan Trollope.
"They have been very successful at selling to a very specific segment of the market place that is more interested in lower price solutions."
The Australian security vendor is reported to have cost Symantec AU$300 million, and according to Trollope, gives it an avenue to target these countries without needing to drop its prices for Norton.
Asia Pacific is Symantec's fastest growing region, however, it generates the least revenue of its global operations, netting the company US$231 million, or about 14 per cent, of its total revenues for Symantec's first quarter 2009 earnings.
"I think price is an important component of the offering you bring to an emerging market. Some require lower prices, some accept higher prices, but with India and China in particular, you have to go in with lower prices," the executive told ZDNet.com.au.
While Norton Antivirus 2008 costs AU$59.00, and its Internet Security suite costs AU$99.00, PC Tools' equivalents respectively cost AU$49.95 and AU$79.95.
At the time of the acquisition, technology analysts at Gartner and Intelligent Business Research Services struggled to explain why Symantec would buy PC Tools, which had similar products to its own and added just 200 staff to Symantec's ranks of 17,000.
Trollope said that PC Tools did offer it some new technologies. Registry Mechanic, PC Tools Utility Suite, Threat Fire, and Browser Defender are considered "complementary" to Symantec's products.
While Symantec planned to run PC Tools as a "completely independent company", he said some products would be assessed for overlaps with Symantec's existing products.
"[PC Tools] have Spyware Doctor and they've got some other products that are similar to our products where we will be certainly interested in looking at how do they overlap and who provides which service," he said.
Trollope declined to confirm whether it had paid AU$300 million for PC Tools.
----------------------------------
Symantec have acquired PC Tools because of Threatfire engine (formerly Cyberhawk, Zero-day behavior based anti-malware) and ThreatExpert (PC Tools's sandbox automation tool for threat analysis).
Furthermore, because AV market is increasingly becoming competitive and narrower, it’s very important to acquired competitors to stay competitive in the market place.
Both Symantec, McAfee and Trend Micro have been acquiring third party anti-malware and security product vendors in order to acquire newly developed technology or destroy possible competitors, it’s usual Art of War strategy in ever competitive business world.
28 August 2008 04:16 PM
Computer security giant Symantec said it would not integrate the software of recent acquisition PC Tools into its mainstream Norton suite, instead using the products as its low-cost option for countries such as India and China.
"The goal right now is to look at emerging markets. We'd like to see PC Tools take emerging markets — countries like Brazil, Russia, India, China," said Symantec's VP of consumer engineering, Rowan Trollope.
"They have been very successful at selling to a very specific segment of the market place that is more interested in lower price solutions."
The Australian security vendor is reported to have cost Symantec AU$300 million, and according to Trollope, gives it an avenue to target these countries without needing to drop its prices for Norton.
Asia Pacific is Symantec's fastest growing region, however, it generates the least revenue of its global operations, netting the company US$231 million, or about 14 per cent, of its total revenues for Symantec's first quarter 2009 earnings.
"I think price is an important component of the offering you bring to an emerging market. Some require lower prices, some accept higher prices, but with India and China in particular, you have to go in with lower prices," the executive told ZDNet.com.au.
While Norton Antivirus 2008 costs AU$59.00, and its Internet Security suite costs AU$99.00, PC Tools' equivalents respectively cost AU$49.95 and AU$79.95.
At the time of the acquisition, technology analysts at Gartner and Intelligent Business Research Services struggled to explain why Symantec would buy PC Tools, which had similar products to its own and added just 200 staff to Symantec's ranks of 17,000.
Trollope said that PC Tools did offer it some new technologies. Registry Mechanic, PC Tools Utility Suite, Threat Fire, and Browser Defender are considered "complementary" to Symantec's products.
While Symantec planned to run PC Tools as a "completely independent company", he said some products would be assessed for overlaps with Symantec's existing products.
"[PC Tools] have Spyware Doctor and they've got some other products that are similar to our products where we will be certainly interested in looking at how do they overlap and who provides which service," he said.
Trollope declined to confirm whether it had paid AU$300 million for PC Tools.
----------------------------------
Symantec have acquired PC Tools because of Threatfire engine (formerly Cyberhawk, Zero-day behavior based anti-malware) and ThreatExpert (PC Tools's sandbox automation tool for threat analysis).
Furthermore, because AV market is increasingly becoming competitive and narrower, it’s very important to acquired competitors to stay competitive in the market place.
Both Symantec, McAfee and Trend Micro have been acquiring third party anti-malware and security product vendors in order to acquire newly developed technology or destroy possible competitors, it’s usual Art of War strategy in ever competitive business world.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Symantec acquires Sydney's PC Tools
Symantec acquires PC Tools
Mahesh Sharma | August 19, 2008
PC Tools also recently released anti-virus software to protect the Mac OS X operating system.
Mahesh Sharma | August 19, 2008
SYMANTEC has bolstered its consumer product portfolio with the acquisition of Australian security software developer PC Tools.
The value of the deal wasn’t disclosed. It is expected to be finalised by the end of the year.
PC Tools is headquartered in Sydney, with offices in US, Britain, Ireland and Ukraine. Symantec said the acquisition expands its reach in emerging regional markets.
PC Tools has over 200 staff globally and will remain a separate entity in the security giant’s consumer business.
Chief executive Simon Clausen will report to Symantec’s group president of consumer products, Janice Chaffin.
Symantec will not rebrand PC Tools’ products and will maintain existing partners and channels.
PC Tools also recently released anti-virus software to protect the Mac OS X operating system.
Monday, February 5, 2007
Attack on Virtual machine
Here is good reading material for people interest in Virtual machine and malware.
It's pdf file, so you will need Adobe reader or free PDF reader.
Link: http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/reference/Virtual_Machine_Threats.pdf
It's pdf file, so you will need Adobe reader or free PDF reader.
Link: http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/reference/Virtual_Machine_Threats.pdf
Wednesday, January 3, 2007
Rockband for Checkpoint, Symantec & IBM
Check out another Rockband for company.
Link: http://www.ranum.com/editorials/corporate-songs/index.html
Including
The Checkpoint song
Symantec Revolution
Ever Onward I.B.M
Followup from Symantec Rockband http://www.rockdotrock.com/
Link: http://www.ranum.com/editorials/corporate-songs/index.html
Including
The Checkpoint song
Symantec Revolution
Ever Onward I.B.M
Followup from Symantec Rockband http://www.rockdotrock.com/
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