Symantec and the big Security 2.0 lie
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This blog's readers know how much I love Symantec. No other company in the security space provides me so much concern like this one.
Symantec spent last years acquiring one after another quite dozen of valid security firms, trying to reach a leadership position thanks to marketshare, not quality of products.
The company has been so successful in acquiring and so unsuccessful in integrating that I usually refer to it with the name of Symantec of Borg.
This strategy never really worked so the company could just maintain a leadership in its own market segment: antivirus.
Unfortunately this segment is going to be saturated by the biggest competitor possiible, Microsoft, which has interest and economical power to offer multiple anti-malware products for free to consumer and business audience if needed. And will eventually do.
In my years of experience I cannot remember meeting a single user, system administrator, security professional, CTO or CIO, not complaining about Symantec core product performances or lack of innovation.
Fearing Microsoft competition and knowing its own weakness, Symantec is now trying to create new (non-existent) markets where it can escape.
So it just launched Security 2.0 (I knew someone sooner or later would have this bad idea).
Its CEO, John Thompson, launched the initiative declaring worms and viruses problems is solved. Or at least this is what InformationWeek reports.
Security 2.0? But if we still are far away to reach a stable 1.0...
The new wave of products forming the Symantec Security 2.0 is incredible:
I prefer to not further comment remaining 2 announcements of this wave: partnership for services with VeriSign (for 2-factors authentication) and Accenture (for risk assessment and management).
If this is Security 2.0 I want to directly skip next major release.
Symantec spent last years acquiring one after another quite dozen of valid security firms, trying to reach a leadership position thanks to marketshare, not quality of products.
The company has been so successful in acquiring and so unsuccessful in integrating that I usually refer to it with the name of Symantec of Borg.
This strategy never really worked so the company could just maintain a leadership in its own market segment: antivirus.
Unfortunately this segment is going to be saturated by the biggest competitor possiible, Microsoft, which has interest and economical power to offer multiple anti-malware products for free to consumer and business audience if needed. And will eventually do.
In my years of experience I cannot remember meeting a single user, system administrator, security professional, CTO or CIO, not complaining about Symantec core product performances or lack of innovation.
Fearing Microsoft competition and knowing its own weakness, Symantec is now trying to create new (non-existent) markets where it can escape.
So it just launched Security 2.0 (I knew someone sooner or later would have this bad idea).
Its CEO, John Thompson, launched the initiative declaring worms and viruses problems is solved. Or at least this is what InformationWeek reports.
Security 2.0? But if we still are far away to reach a stable 1.0...
The new wave of products forming the Symantec Security 2.0 is incredible:
- Norton Confidential Online Edition
An anti-phising tool (we are plenty of these tools. All 1.0) able to block keyloggers (something the anti-virus should already do)?
In any case a very poor approach to the problem: if banks want to offer a safe environment to customers could simply send them a USB key filled with VMware Player (free) and a custom Linux distribution (free as well), able to only connect home-banking site. Nothing could be more 2.0 than this. - Symantec Database Security
A behavioral host IDS? Thanks, we are working on them since years, still addressing false positives and false negatives issues. - Symantec Mail Security 8300 Series
The dear old Brightmail Anti-spam engine in a shining new case? It also features content filtering? Thanks, we do that since 10 years, and WebSense is still leader in this segment.
I prefer to not further comment remaining 2 announcements of this wave: partnership for services with VeriSign (for 2-factors authentication) and Accenture (for risk assessment and management).
If this is Security 2.0 I want to directly skip next major release.
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