Symantec Endpoint Security Reviews

We use the product as an antivirus solution and install it on every end-user machine.  

I think Symantec is a good antivirus solution. There is not really a specific feature that I think stands out. If you consider the protection as a feature, I would say that antivirus protection is the most valuable feature the product has.  

We have had some problems with the Symantec solution. The problems were bad enough that I was compelled to start to research into other products. The biggest issue was the whitelisting feature. The Symantec software has a feature that detects certain things as malicious and it takes care of the issue. It is supposed to do that. Sometimes the things it flags are not real issues — they are essentially false positives. Sometimes there are things we want it to let through that it would otherwise flag. We put these things on a whitelist so they get allowed. We were having a problem keeping a particular file on the whitelist. It was an EXE and Symantec kept flagging it even when it was whitelisted.  

To fix the issue, we had to do in-house software development. We had to run some extra code. The process was not smooth and, in the long run, it basically did not work. The support by Symantec on the issue was of no further help and it remained a problem.  

A feature that seems to be missing from Symantec is reporting on external devices. For example, if a remote user gets a virus on their computer and they are accessing our system, I want to know. The Symantec agent should be checking this in the cloud and informing us that a particular end-user got a virus. I should get a report or alert somehow. The computer in question should be isolated — or something like that — to mitigate the potential of the threat. Instead, nothing happens.   

The enterprise product that we have now does not have that feature. Maybe Symantec has that feature implemented in other products, but I do not know about it. Maybe it is not there at all or maybe it is some type of cloud feature. But the end result is I have looked for the solution in the product, can not find it, support did not inform me that it can be resolved, and we are essentially left with a vulnerability. That is really not acceptable.   

I have been using Symantec Endpoint security for about 2 years.  

It is stable. We do not really have problems with the product crashing.  

Endpoint Security is not that scalable right now because it is hard to even get a new quote. It is part of the problem happening during the transition when they got bought up by Broadcom. The whole process of renewing and buying new licenses has become a pain. It takes forever to get a quote.  

On a daily basis in our company right now there are around 300 people using the product. The system is monitored by the system admin and myself. We have a cooperative situation.  

The Symantec customer support team is responsive by email. I would say it is between 80% to 90% effective.  

I have not used other antivirus products as an admin. The Symantec product was already in use at the company when I came here.  

I would say that the initial installation is moderately straightforward. It is not really completely straightforward and it is not really complex. It is somewhere in the middle.  

The deployment of the server takes more time, but I am not the one who deployed it. I do not know exactly how long it took. I am not aware of any surprises or difficulties with the deployment.  

The system admin did the installation without external assistance.  

I was not the one who implemented Symantec at our company. The decision was made before I arrived and I inherited the product.  

I am now researching products in consideration of deploying a replacement option for Symantec because it is not totally meeting our security needs.  

The honest advice I would have for someone considering this solution at this point in time is to move on. I say this because Symantec is being bought out by Broadcom. That may not be a bad thing on its own. Symantec has traditionally been a very good company and still was up to this point. But being bought by another company just means that there will be a mess because of the transition and integration between these companies and products. Developers of the product will be spending time focusing on that merger rather than core product issues. It creates a little bit of a mess that the client should not have to suffer through when there are other capable solutions.  

Another thing is that Symantec still needs to implement some features that it does not have. They have very good, strong protection, but they are behind other products on the market. There are a lot of more features they have failed to implement. Especially now when everyone is working remotely and with cloud products, the security does not seem complete.  

Maybe the cloud version addresses these issues. I have not used the cloud version because I am on the enterprise version and like in-house deployment. Our version is missing a ton of features that are very important to security especially in the current environment.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate Symantec End-User Endpoint Security as a seven-out-of-ten. It is missing too much to be rated higher.  

We basically use the solution for endpoint protection.

The single-pane management is the solution's most valuable feature. It makes administrative control very easy.

I'm not sure if the solution can improve that much more. Right now, for me, I'm asking the question "How does Defender stack up against the product we're paying for?" 

Defender comes with Windows 10 and we have Windows 10 throughout our environment. With that being free, we're asking ourselves why we would pay for another solution that's sort of redundant.

I know they were just bought out by Broadcom and there have been some difficulties with Broadcom as far as getting license renewals, etc. Mostly, due to the fact that it's confusing, even for the vendor, people are turned off by it. The vendors are telling us that it can take weeks for them to get a renewal quote, nevermind the actual renewal.

I've actually had to call Symantec myself because my vendor said "Well, we're going to try it, but it's going to take weeks to get an answer from them." In the end, it was internally expedited and I got the answer the next day, however, that's an exception, not the rule.

I know a number of people that have left just because of the fact that when Broadcom first bought them, and their licensing ran out, the company provided a temporary license and then another instead of dealing with a proper license. One had to argue for another renewal or for them to promise to give them the proper license in the third month. He finally got it, however, it took three months of begging. That doesn't seem right.

I've been using the solution for about ten years at this point. It's been at least a decade.

From a usage point, it's very stable. With the new company Broadcom, that's taken them over, I know they've had some shakeups. My concern is whether or not Broadcom continues to support it going forward. If they do I'm fine with it. If they don't or they start having failures in their support, then I'm going to have to leave them.

I don't know enough about the scalability to really have an opinion on it, one way or the other. I wouldn't be able to comment on it.

Currently, we have anywhere between 100 and 500 users on the solution.

I've used technical support in the past. They've always been okay. We've had very few incidents where we've had to have to call them and ask for assistance. Out of those incidents, in my recollection, the last one was probably a couple of years ago, but those incidents were quickly resolved. 

I would say, overall, we've been satisfied with their level of service in the past.

The initial setup wasn't complex at all. It was very straightforward. However, in our case, the initial set up was 10 years ago. Its been a very, very long time. I can't speak to what it is like right now. It may be different, or just as easy.

We're a not-for-profit. We do get exceptionally good pricing, however, I cannot say exactly what the costs are for us on a monthly or yearly basis.

We're just a Symantec customer. We aren't a partner or reseller.

We're currently using the latest version of the solution.

Overall, we're pretty happy with the product.

I would tell other organizations considering implementing it that it's a great tool. My concern again would be if Broadcom doesn't really invest in the product's success. Often companies will buy out their competitors and/or they'll buy out a product line thinking that they want to get into that field. Then they turn around and they dump the product line after a year or two and decide, "Well, I guess we don't want to go this way," or they are just buying it out to get rid of the competition.

My concern lies in the new company failing to come through on updates or the delivery of the service. It remains to be seen whether they're going to fail, or whether they're going to continue to support the product and keep it as a high-end solution.

So far I've been very happy with them. I would rate them overall as fairly high, maybe a nine out of ten. The only thing that worries me as a user is whether or not Broadcom is going to continue to support them going forward.

The primary use cases of this solution are for antivirus protection, anti-malware protection, and personal firewall protection.

The most valuable feature is the automated updating. They send out updates on a regular basis. All that we have to do is to set it up on our server to download it, then it is distributed to the individual endpoints. 

Individual machines could do the same thing but it would only be on that one machine.

It seems to block things fairly well.

This solution is resource-heavy. It uses up a lot of memory and a lot of disk space. It demands a lot of resources. There have been improvements with Windows 10 and it's not as problematic.

The firewall capabilities did not seem to do what the documentation claimed it should do.

Port control is one of the things that this solution does do, but it does it on a higher level. When I say port control, it's things like USB ports that can be used to plug things in. For example, if you plug in a wired mouse or a wireless mouse then you want the flexibility to be able to do that. It should be able to identify that it is a mouse and let you use it. 

By the same token, if you plug in a 1 TB external hard drive, that should be shut down unless it is one of your hard drives. The only way to detect that would be to have units with their own serial number and the system programmed in such a way that it would recognize it.

Seagate for example has many external drives. They have serial numbers on those drives, and we don't want to just set it up for use by any Seagate drive. We want our external drives to be used, only. We don't want to have to go purchase Seagate drives to have it work. We want them to get it from us, that we know works, and have them return it to us.

I would like to see a check-in system where you can log which specific drives your staff can access and what they cannot access.

I have been using this solution for approximately six to eight years.

With Windows 7 there were some stability issues. The environment handled resources differently. You could have a fairly resource-heavy solution that would make the system unusable.

Windows 10 improved stability quite a bit.

Technical support is good, but when they sold to Broadcom, even though people were paying for the support they were not getting it.

This product is more reasonably priced than some competing solutions.

We spoke with some vendors who recommended Sophos and Crowdstrike. While Crowdstrike has some incredible features, it's four times the cost.

Sophos is supposed to handle our needs.

Crowdstrike could handle our needs and then some, but we couldn't justify the cost.

Within the last three or four months, we decided to drop Symantec on its own because of some issues we have with the company. We will be using Sophos.

Symantec sold off their enterprise solutions, which this product falls into. When they sold it. they sold it to a company that has purchased software packages in the past and not done very well with it. They are a hardware company trying to expand into the software realm. This is another example of a hardware company that thinks that they can do software and they can't.

We were told that Broadcom was ignoring all of their customers that were below a certain level of license purchases. Some of the customers were calling wanting to renew their product and they were having to wait a month or six weeks just to get a quote.

We did our own research and confirmed that what we were told was true and decided that we were not going to renew and went to Sophos.

If you are going with Symantec, definitely purchase the 24/7 tech support. They will help you with just about everything, or at least they used to. I am not sure if that still applies to Broadcom.

They now offer the option to put it into the cloud for the management capabilities. That way the endpoints, the individual laptops, and desktop computers are actually going to a website to get the management, the new definitions, and new configurations. This option should seriously be considered. 

I am not recommending that they do that but they should at least seriously consider it, because, while having that one server to do that one thing is fairly important, it would be nice to not have to deal with it.

For what we were using this product for it was pretty good, but there were some things that we didn't like, and some things that we would have like to take advantage of.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

It helps me with the security policies that I make. I can change policies quickly and easily.

The valuable features are device control, SONOR, and anti-virus.

Device control in Symantec is not limited to only some devices. You can add any device you want, so that it can become a part of the policy you made. The anti-virus feature is very good.

I would like to see improvements in the anti-virus and the device control features.

Anti-Virus: I would like to see Symantec improve the ant-virus to stop and detect Ransomware and email attachments. Symantec is weak with Ransomware. I would like to see the anti-spam for Outlook improve the scanning and blocking of attachments.

Device control: I would like to see an improvement in the USB control, because it sometimes creates a conflict with USB printers.

I have been using this solution since 2006.

There were no stability issues.

Customer Service:

Customer service is very good.

Technical Support:

I used technical support through a vendor and they were very good.

The initial setup was easy and I had no problem with it.

I evaluated other options like McAfee and Sophos, but they weren’t good enough for me.

Symantec's Endpoint Protection Small Business Edition earns high marks from AV-TEST for protection and usability. However, this antivirus software doesn't scan email, a vulnerability in today's digital age. It might be the best choice for antivirus protection for your small business but that depends on the features and functions most important for your business and your security.
just make sure thats you are always update and you have the latest release.

This is very good product. My advice is to calculate your needs. Make a decision based on an accurate assessment of the price, the licensing, and the support.

When I choose a product, I look for stability, security, and safety.

We use it to maintain a minimum of security in our office. It's very important to have an antivirus in our environment. The main object of the solution is to maintain stability so that our environment is protected from any websites that can harm our solution.

To prevent attacks you need a full range of protection: antivirus, anti-spam, proxies, and firewalls. Symantec provides the antivirus piece.

It has reduced our attack surface and that's why we keep using the solution. It helps prevent cyber attacks and spam. Symantec Endpoint Security is an important element for maintaining security in our company.

One of the most valuable features is the ability to manage antivirus security. There is an admin console that helps you make policies and do deployment of the clients, to make them reachable and to deploy updates.

Using the management console is a bit complex. There are many features that we cannot use and we could use some help. We need some assistance to make them work better. They need to add features to make it simpler.

It may also need to be updated for new attacks.

I have been using Symantec Endpoint Security since I started this job three years ago.

The stability is good.

We use it for every laptop, locally. We have about 50 users.

We have not used the technical support so far.

I have also used Kaspersky, in another job.

The deployment does not take very much time, maybe 15 minutes, under good conditions. But it depends on many factors.

It's affordable.

We haven't compared the pricing with other solutions. When our license renewal arrives we will look at our needs and we will evaluate every option possible so that we can choose the right one.

When I came to this company they were already using Symantec.

Symantec is a good solution. I recommend it over some other products. There are two or three products that can help, such as Kaspersky. Every solution has its advantages and disadvantages. It depends on your choice or needs.

We don't know how to use it to block attackers that are attempting to gain control of Active Directory. I don't know if an antivirus can interface directly with Active Directory. Our aim is to secure all solutions, not only Active Directory.

Overall, Symantec Endpoint Security is an important tool to help our factory make progress. Symantec has a good reputation and I would recommend it.

Symantec End-User Endpoint Security is used to control some device access and protect endpoints.

Because of organizational changes, I dislike the entire situation. The solution has become quite complicated since Broadcom acquired Symantec, and we no longer sell it or try not to sell it.

There have been so many changes since the Broadcom acquisition, that we feel like abandoning the product.

It now has a lack of support, and they could be more knowledgeable.

We have been selling Symantec End-User Endpoint Security for more than eight years.

It is deployed both on-premises and on the cloud.

Symantec End-User Endpoint Security is a stable solution.

We have three or four clients who still use this solution.

Symantec End-User Endpoint Security is bad because the support has changed.

Technical support could be more knowledgeable.

We are doing more with Forcepoint. We are not doing as much as we used to with Symantec End-User Endpoint Security.

The installation is straightforward, it's quite simple.

We require a team of two engineers to deploy and maintain this solution.

Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis.

The price could be lower.

I would not recommend this solution to others who are considering using it.

I would rate Symantec End-User Endpoint Security a five out of ten.

I use this for antivirus and email security.

It is very easy to use and keeps us secure.

It would be nice to see more antivirus features for USB control.

I have been using this solution for over 20 years.

Is it stable product, no issues so far.

It is highly scalable.

Symantec does not have local support.

Initial setup was straightforward and varies depending on machine type. I only require two engineers to maintain this tool.

I was able to implement this with one other team member.

I recommend this product and would rate it a nine out of ten.

We use this product for threat detection.

This solution is just another antivirus. Whether it actually works, nobody knows. If it finds something then it's great but if it misses something then we just don't know about it.

If this product detects a threat then it will provide an alert.

This product uses a signature-based detection system, which is something that we want to move away from. The current buzz is about next-generation antivirus, which is user-behavior-based protection rather than signature-based. Behavior-based detection relies on patterns of behavior to search for suspicious activity.

The problem with a signature-based solution is that if the signature is in the file then it catches the threat. If it's not there, then it doesn't. These days, when a virus infects the system, it doesn't advertise the fact. The only way you figure it out is if something malicious happens, such as ransomware. With a behavior-based detection system, you can identify a threat before it does something malicious.

There is no local support for Symantec products in Hong Kong.

I have been working with Symantec End-User Endpoint Security since I joined the organization, which is less than a year. The company has been using it for longer.

The stability is fine.

We don't have much concern about scalability because we don't expand a lot. It isn't something that we considered or looked into.

We have 30 users in the company.

We wanted to reach technical support but it was a very complicated process. There is no local Broadcom support in Hong Kong.

The whole process needs to be improved. You have to log in, put in some verification information that includes a lot of credentials. Then, they want you to upload your license information before you can log a ticket. Overall, it's not a nice process.

It takes a really long time to get support and when you're waiting for something to be fixed, it's not like you have all of the time in the world.

I would rate the technical support a one out of ten.

The implementation and deployment were completed before I joined the company. For maintenance, one person working from time to time is enough. Usually, there is not much to do.

This is not the cheapest product and I know others that are most cost-effective, although it is difficult to compare because it depends on the features.

We are currently looking for other products that we can replace Symantec with. Within the next nine months, we will have evaluated several products and selected one that is more suitable.

We are switching because Symantec has been sold to Broadcom, and Broadcom no longer has an office in Hong Kong. We want to have a product that has local support available.

One of the reasons that we are changing products is because we want behavior-based detection instead of something that is signature-based. Symantec has products that fit these requirements but we won't be considering them because of the support issues. We won't be looking any further into Symantec products and don't plan on comparing any of the features that they have.

My advice for anybody who is looking to implement the Symantec product is to ensure that they have support available. They should check to make sure that there is somebody contactable in case of a problem.

For what we are paying for, which is a signature-based antivirus, the product is fine. In the future, Symantec needs to continue moving with the trend in the rest of the antivirus or anti-malware world. They need behavior-based detection, sandboxing, user-based, and other advanced features. Signature-based detection will always be there because it's fast. However, it needs other features to detect more advanced threats.

I would rate this solution a five out of ten.