Symantec Endpoint Security Reviews

It's a good proxy to control the user's access to the website. 

We never expect downtime. There is also great ease of use for my admins.

We have no issues with the scalability of the product. 

It's amazing. They have the local support team always here, and they also have the international level team.

I'm based out in Dubai, so we purchase these products through channel partners. There are a certain level of channel partners, like platinum or gold or silver. 

It is not cheap. 

I also have experience using Forcepoint and Websense Content Gateway. 

It is one of the best products out there. They are to the mark. 

It has made anti-virus and security management much easier. Also, it has really lowered the time required to manage all of the endpoints, resulting in higher efficiency, and a better efficiency/cost ratio. It has a really good cost-benefit.

The centralized console is great for us. It gives us one centralized console to manage all of the endpoints.

Also, it is reliable and gives us quick updates. The overall system is responsive and doesn't choke up too much when running Endpoint Protection.

It would be nice to be able to manage the endpoints a bit further. A valuable attribute would be the management of software inventory, software deployment, and third-party software deployment. I would like to see the ability to deploy and delete unlicensed software. Many users try to install what they shouldn't, so that would be really useful.

What would be really great would be to have the ability t manage those applications that you don't need to install to run. Those are a nightmare for companies, for mine as well. Applications like BitTorrent and unsupported browsers, all of those. Even with decreased user privileges, they are still able to run, so that's a big area to focus on in the future.

The stability is great. I have no issues.

Its scalability is great, no question.

I have dealt with technical support twice. One was related to an install issue, and that was quickly resolved. It was an old operating system. In one night it was fixed with no issues. They have good support overall.

Previously we were using McAfee, and we switched to Symantec for ease of operation and stability. This solution has much better performance than McAfee.

My most important criteria when selecting a vendor are price and performance.

Other vendors that we evaluated were Kaspersky and McAfee.

If someone else is researching this type of solution, I would say go for it and try this solution because overall, it is one of the best, if not the best product on the market. It's really great, especially for mid-sized companies. It really cuts down the management.

I would rate this solution a nine because of the support and the quality of the product.

Primary usage is on endpoints, desktops, clients, and servers, and it's working okay.

It blocks malware, as it is supposed to.

We're able to tune it to work with our products.

I would like to see even more customization, the possibility to do whitelisting. It needs to be a little bit more liberal on whitelisting, even to use the name if needed, instead of hashes.

Stability is good.

We only have 10,000 endpoints so it's not that much, but it's working.

Depending on who you end up with, it can take a while before you get the correct support.

The out-of-the-box functionality, the vanilla setup, is okay, but then tuning is needed. Overall the setup is straightforward.

My most important criterion when selecting a vendor is that they are easy to work with.

I rate it at eight out of 10. When, say, Microsoft releases a new OS version twice a year, you never know if the current version of Symantec Endpoint Protection will support it. You can have a lag between when Microsoft releases a new client - and then the current version doesn't work correctly - and it could be some months between updates from Symantec.

Overall, it's really good product. It has saved us a lot of time and, most of the time, it's a self-playing piano.

I use it as an antivirus.

For protection use only.

I would like to see fileless attack protection. Also, the version could be lighter.

It is stable.

No scalability issues.

We have not used it.

We switched to a new solution because we wanted more security and protection features.

The initial setup is straightforward. Though, make sure to check the system requirements before deploying it.

The vendors on our shortlist were Trend Micro and Kaspersky.

We are satisfied with it.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: 

• The support team
• Good reviews/reputation.

Endpoint protection. The performance has been adequate, not great.

The biggest benefit right now is that we have a lot of people who know it well. Based on what we've seen, we don't think it's the best solution out there. But it catches basic things.

Protecting data, protecting end-points.

The biggest thing I would like to see is malware remediation, if there is some kind of outbreak. We'd like to see better remediation and better detection and response. It's pretty good at capturing things, but it doesn't stop everything, so better machine learning would be helpful.

It has been around a while but I don't think it has successfully made the jump into next-generation features, like a lot of its competitors have.

It's fairly scalable. It meets our needs from a scalability standpoint.

Symantec tech support is fairly good, a little hard to get a hold of sometimes, but fairly good overall.

We are switching because we don't feel that Symantec as a company is keeping up with next-generation trends. They just seem to be resting on their accomplishments too much and don't seem like they are progressive.

The most important criteria when selecting a vendor are a highly rated, good product - that factor is at the top of the list. Also, good functionality, good support, good price, and good margins, since we resell.

We have been working with Sophos for a couple of years now, and we finally decided to make it official and move forward with them instead of Symantec. I like the Sophos story. I like their solution. I like their holistic approach. And their support is really great.

I would rate Symantec's solution a six out of 10. It's not as feature-rich with next-generation technology, as a lot of its competitors are.

My advice would be, look at something else. Don't look at Symantec. Look for something that has a more holistic approach.

For now it is used for virus and malware protection, we are still working on other features. We have deployed it for workstation and servers. 

Managing SEP is very easy, and also troubleshooting part is easily managed. New Version is good with new features. 

Basic features, as in every AV solutions, the virus and spyware protection are very good compare to other AV solutions in market. SONAR is one feature which I found to be exceptional

They should work on the virus definition file and agent  lighter.

Pushing agent to remote users via console is issue 

Not yet.

It is very scalable.

Customer Service:

An eight out of 10.

Technical Support:

An eight out of 10.

Actually, I have not switched to Symantec, but have worked on different clients using different solutions (which include Symantec). I found Symantec to be good and easy to work with.

Initial setup is easy and simple. 

We did an in-house implementation.

It is the better product, even if it is a little on the higher side.

McAfee and Trend Micro.

• Helps to protect our organization from known attacks. 
• Blocks malicious files, which are not generally repelled well.

• Administration
• Orchestration for broken clients fixes
• Healing of agents

I'm an IT consultant, so I implement Symantec Endpoint Protection for customers, from SMB up to large enterprises and federal government.

There are a number of features that all work synergistically to be able to provide the protection. Originally, anti-virus was based on definition. About 10 years ago, the bad guys figured out how to get past that. So what they've been doing for the past 10 years is adding in additional features to help mitigate any of these other attack vectors that the hackers or malicious people have. So it's just a working together of all these components that makes it special.

And then SEP itself fits into the Symantec ecosystem, and inter-operates with a number of other technologies to provide a comprehensive security portfolio.

I think the key thing for me, is interoperability, in that you can deploy it to Windows, Mac, and Linux. That's been a really important feature in the last two years. Now there's one management console to cover all three OSs.

There are two key aspects to how it has improved. One is the threats that it protects the organization from versus the amount of resource utilization; and two is that compatibility has increased.

They're just starting to get into this now, but I think they can do better - they're just starting out with I think is called the SEP Cloud Console. It has more limited functionality. It will be good once we can run SEP from the cloud. That would be good.

The big issues around stability were fixed back around 2010 or so. When the original SEP client was created, there were some challenges with the interoperability of the different components, because they took a number of different agents, put them into one agent, and then they broke things. With SEP 12 and forward, that all runs really well now.

From a scalability perspective, in Australia and New Zealand, where I'm using it, it can easily manage any workload that we've got. 

One of the challenges is people going the opposite way, that is, people trying to deploy Symantec Endpoint Protection - which is an enterprise level product - into a small business of a hundred users. It can introduce a lot of complexity that doesn't have to be there.

There are other solutions like SEP.cloud which can make it easier for small businesses to be able to use very similar technologies to Symantec Endpoint Protection.

Most times it's good, but there are instances where there are some challenges in that the people who you're working with don't know how to fix what you're doing. Then you have to ask for an escalation. Normally what I'll do is I'll work with my Symantec colleagues to help escalate any internal issues, where we see that things are getting bogged down in support.

From a Symantec technology perspective I'm very happy with it. However, the support can be wanting, for those reasons. Sometimes the time to resolution is longer than I would expect.

Based on the roles that I've had, I've been working as a Symantec consultant for 10 years, and so I've just been working with SEP. There are people who, as their consulting function would be an endpoint protection guy, would do McAfee, SEP, Trend, etc., whereas my strategy was different. I basically covered off all Symantec technologies. My intent was to be able to be specialized across the entire range of security technologies. I've only worked with SEP.

The initial setup is easy. That's one of the selling features, that you can roll it out in an hour. (They might say 15 minutes or something like that). But the initial rollout, setting up SEPM server, you can do in an hour. Then, the challenge is that you can make it as complex as you want after that. It's very, very capable, but it can get quite complex.

Symantec Endpoint Protection installation and Administration Guide is awesome. The documentation is good. They provide online training and you can also do instructor-led training. There should always be training available, or information available, to help you get where you have to go. That's one of the things I do like. 

I've been an instructor for Symantec for 10 years too, and I've taught the SEP course, and I think it covers off what you need to know.

From a simplicity perspective, it's per user. Therefore, it makes it easy to do licensing.

I'll be honest, I haven't really done licensing with Symantec for seven years. I just do professional services and we let our partners handle the licensing.

Back in the day, when I worked for a distributor, there were other products available, that were cheaper - this is more of a New Zealand example - but they didn't have the functionality. However, because of the small businesses we were working with, they were good enough. 

That is a challenge: having an enterprise product like SEP competing against a cheaper product like Sophos or ESET. The latter are cheaper, but you don't get quite the same scalability, functionality, etc.

Get competent consultants to do the implementation, because it can be complex. You have to have a consultant who is knowledgeable, to make sure they cover off all the bases, to make sure all the infrastructure is protected.

It saves time, in that a professional can get it done more quickly. And, it gets done correctly, so you don't have to do re-work. I've been in circumstances where the customers try to do the implementation themselves and then they bring us in after the fact, and we have to either redo what they've done or rebuild the infrastructure from scratch. That just doubles the cost of what it would have cost originally.

I would say this solution is a 10 out of 10. The big reason is the functionality. Personally, I've not had a breach or seen a breach. And it runs on the machine, and I can't even tell it's there.