Symantec Endpoint Security Reviews

The use case for the solution was basically this: any computer or anything used for any sort of official business needed to have endpoint protection and needed to have some sort of antivirus protection. The thing was somewhat more than just an antivirus, it also included a firewall that operated in addition to the Windows or Mac firewall.

The university policy basically required that all endpoint devices used for official business have to meet certain requirements and one of them was to have an antivirus.

The solution probably caught some malware a certain percentage of the time and that helped the organization. By the time we abandoned it, it was actually less effective, at least on Windows 10 machines, than the built-in antivirus that you get with the Windows 10 Defender Antivirus. It became, in the end, sort-of a liability.

It also became a liability when the company was sold to Broadcom. The name is actually different now. I don't think it's called Symantec Endpoint Protection. It's called Broadcom Endpoint Protection. We had a very difficult time even getting in touch with the technical support from that company, especially after Symantec was sold. It wasn't a very robust solution.

The solution detects malware very well.

It wasn't a very good solution overall, which is why we ended up replacing it.

Most organizations are choosing a next-gen antivirus, one that's based on artificial intelligence. Symantec Endpoint Protection was one of those legacy products that have been around forever. Symantec was a spinoff from Norton. Norton Antivirus was one of the very first antiviruses to come out in the 1980s. Symantec was very highly rated at one point in its life. It never really caught on to the new trends and antivirus protection. And so it still relied on things like a database of virus signatures that would need to get downloaded and then files would be checked for those signatures.

Modern antiviruses don't do that. They're based on behavior. They're based on intelligence algorithms. They're honed by artificial intelligence and machine learning from data collected all over the world. And so for that reason, the next-gen antiviruses are much more efficient at detecting viruses. They also take up a lighter load on the computer.

Next-generation is behavior-based detection rather than signature-based detection. Symantec tried to be a hybrid between the two. It had a behavior-based component called SONAR, however, it was still mostly a signature-based software antivirus application. For that reason, you can never keep up with all the mutations and viruses, and you can't keep up with malicious behavior that isn't based on viruses. Things like downloaded PowerShell scripts, things that computers can do with the components that they already have without needing to put any virus on the computer. A lot of malicious attacks, government-backed attacks, don't use any kind of foreign software. They take advantage of vulnerabilities within existing operating systems like Microsoft Windows or the various versions of Linux or the Mac operating system. They don't need to put additional software on the computer to compromise them.

That, in a nutshell, is why we switched to a next-gen antivirus. Next-gen antiviruses have probably been around for about five or six years. Some of the old companies made the transition to them seamlessly. Symantec didn't. It remained wedded to the old technology and that made it, you could say, a has-been.

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

The stability was not the best. There were times when antivirus updates broke it. It wasn't necessarily self-updating - at least, not in terms of the virus signatures. It updated in terms of the executable files. Therefore, when Windows updates would come out, they often couldn't be installed, or the computer would hang due to the fact that the updates weren't compatible with the antivirus. I give it pretty poor score for robustness.

It was scalable just due to the fact that had to be installed individually on individual computers. For the unmanaged workstations, it was as scalable as you wanted it to be. There was a new download and a new install on a new computer. There are no limits on that. I'm not sure, however, how true that is, as it wasn't within my area of responsibility. I'm not sure if the managed work points overloaded the servers that were meant to monitor them. I don't think that was the case. The scalability was probably pretty good there too. I never heard any complaints about it not being scalable.

We likely had between 10,000 and 20,000 users on it. The roles would include, since it's a university, students, faculty, staff, and researchers. That pretty much covered the type of people that work at a university.

We don't plan to increase usage as we've completely phased out the solution.

Once Symantec was sold to Broadcom, it became very difficult to reach out to technical support, and they just stopped being responsive. By the end, we were very unhappy with their level of support.

I've been at the organization for 21, 22 years. Originally, before we had Symantec, it was McAfee antivirus. We had that up until maybe about 2010 or so. Now, we are using CrowdStrike Falcon.

The initial setup was not complex. It was simple.

The deployment was always ongoing due to the fact that, as a university with something like 16,000 employees, computers were getting bought and repurposed all the time. The initial rollout was in fact not a managed version of the antivirus. It was just a standalone version that users could download from a website when they provided their credentials. After that, they would just double click on a downloaded file and run the installer and they'd have the antivirus.

However, it was completely unmonitored. The antivirus program on their computer was not sending its data anywhere. It couldn't be helped by anyone remotely to do its job of protecting the computer.

Therefore, almost all organizations now want to have a managed antivirus solution where there's software installed on the computer, but it communicates with the cloud, and IT administrators at the organization can control this behavior and learn from it.

In terms of the staff required to handle the deployment and maintenance, there was probably the equivalent of maybe two to three full-time staff that were dedicated to antivirus endpoint protection issues. 

We handled everything ourselves in-house. We didn't need the help of a consultant or integrator.

We pay on a yearly basis. However, I'm unsure of the exact amount.

We did evaluate a number of other vendors. We entertained some RFPs and we did testing on four other competing products. There was one other competitor that was close. The main factor that tilted us toward CrowdStrike is that they did make a last-minute significant cut in price to their offer. I think they reduced it by something like 30% or 40%.

CrowdStrike has been in the business longer and is a bigger company than the runner up as well. To us, that mattered. If there is winnowing out of competitors, if the market actually shrinks and there are a few big players in five years, we want to be sure that we're with one of the big players that are going to make it.

The solution is a kind of a mix between an on-premise managed server that managing some machines, and other machines just had an unmanaged client that was distributed to students. It's not actually a cloud, it's a server. It's an on-premises server. It's not a cloud-based server that is being used. The antiviruses report to the server and policies can be set on the server.

I'd advise users to be aware that there are better solutions out there than this. I've learned that technology can change and your solution may be great now, but in a few years, it may drop to the bottom of the barrel. That's what happened here.

I'd rate the solution one out of ten. In order to get any sort of higher rating, they would need to start it over again from scratch. Instead of trying to make a legacy product better, they should abandon it and invent a new product.

On-premises

The primary use case for this solution is to protect all endpoints in a complex enterprise environment, including it's servers, workstation, Citrix-based systems, includes Windows, Linux and Macs. We're a small company, under 50 users. But we deploy Symantec to companies that have from a few hundred to dozens of thousand users, therefore I have extensive experience with the product. We are partners and resellers and I'm a senior professional services engineer. 

All the features are great with the core being antivirus, spyware, Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Machine Learning, and capabilities like reputation analysis based on their huge footprint, firewall, IPS and device control are very useful at protecting the environment. Unfortunately many companies just use the basic, out of the box solution. Even when they turn on the firewall, they will use it just with its default settings, but if you really learn how to use it and deploy it correctly, it provides much more protection. With Symantec adopting the AI and many of the new protection features like file-less attacks and other modern technologies, it's very attractive and makes a big difference. EPPs by nature have so many parts to it, they can be daunting, even to those with experience, but once deployed it's quite easy to use.

This is a very complete solution. It has all the pieces that you need. Like many companies, Symantec also sell an EDR solution, and it is a feature you'd want to add to an endpoint solution. 

I think Symantec, like many of its competitors, doesn't have comprehensive built-in reporting. The product keeps improving, but reporting and alerting is not keeping pace, and these are critical.

I've been using this solution for about 13 years. 

This is a very stable solution. 

In terms of scalability, it's one of the best out there. I did a project for a major hotel chain that also has rental properties. Some of these places have five users, and then others have 200 users. When you deploy in a company like that, scalability and the ability to protect remote places without having to put a server out there, is critical. And Symantec just really scales up. It's very efficient. It can be used in a company that has a lot of remote users, like oil companies with remote locations. It's a solution that allows you to support a worldwide company that might have offices in dozens of countries, and it just works.

The technical support is similar to other companies. You're assigned a low level guy on your first call. We don't have issues with the basic things, it's more about the bigger problems so we always have to escalate and they do a good job of it.

The initial setup is super easy. Deployment is faster than in other solutions but it still takes time. It needs to be done in steps. You initiate it with a test and pilot to discover false positives or whether it might be blocking things or creating an issue on your network. A lot of companies have custom code programs and typically any EEP would trigger false positives. The companies we deploy to are generally medium or large so you have to be strict on your load because the impact can be brutal if not done right. You then carry out an expanded pilot and once you're satisfied that it's not going to bring your network down, you deploy it almost at once. You go from deploying it to 25 endpoints as a test to maybe 200 endpoints as an expanded pilot, and then you deploy it to 5,000 computers over a relatively short period of time.

We generally offer up to a six-month window for implementation and it usually takes between two weeks to six months to fully deploy. The process isn't difficult, you just have to be careful. You can deploy all the features in a month if it's a small environment including all the testing and pilot phases. 

My understanding is that the price is quite good and competitive. My advise is to invest the necessary time and effort to deploy it correctly and with minimal disruption. In the enterprise arena, if you don't have the in-house expertise in the more complex areas of the product do your organization a favor and get expert assistance.

Many, there are numerous great solutions in this market and they all offer great protection. The differences are in the feature sets, some for example don't have firewall, device control or Intrusion Preventions, or for example don't have the scalability required to deploy to companies that have hundreds of remote offices that have a few computers and hardly any bandwidth, and they can cause bottlenecks.

It's like any enterprise solution, it needs to be done professionally. People complain about Symantec, claiming it's messed up their system but I've deployed it to hundreds of places of all sizes and have had few issues. The problems are self-induced because the people deploying didn't know what they were doing, and didn't understand the solution. They didn't do the pilot, they didn't do the best practices. And so something happened, messed up the system, and created problems, and they blamed the product. 

This remains a very viable solution. There's a lot of sexier stuff out there, but Symantec brings a lot to the table with their introduction of AI and the latest technologies. They continue to be a well-designed system that just works. 

I would rate this solution a nine out of 10. 

Private Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

We primarily use the solution for our routing in our corporate office and have it installed all over that place.

The solution works very well. It has a good IP signature and network.

The product offers a lot of very useful features.

It's good for large organizations. It's able to handle a lot of users.  

The solution is very difficult to uninstall. There isn't really a way to uninstall the product at all, which is quite a headache.

It's also complicated to upgrade the product. They need to make these aspects much easier.

Sometimes the solution will just randomly stop working. I'm not sure why this happens.

The licensing aspects of the solution could be improved.

I haven't used the product for about five or six months at this point, so it's hard to say which features they are missing and new items may have been added since then.

I've been using the solution for the last eight to ten years.

We've never had issues with stability. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. The stability is quite good and it's very reliable.

We've been in touch with technical support and have found them to be responsive and knowledgeable. We're satisfied with their level of service.

I was involved in the original setup and implementation of the solution and I found it to be quite straightforward. It's not too complex. However, it does take a good amount of time, and it would be better if it was faster or easier.

The solution needs better licensing options.

I'd recommend the solution. If the company finds that Symantec fits their requirements, they should choose it. The product offers a lot of great features.

Overall, I'd rate the solution six out of ten. If they had a way to easily uninstall the product and if we could figure out why it suddenly stops working occasionally, I'd rate it a bit higher.

On-premises

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.  

On-premises

We just use it mainly for workstation protection.

The anti-virus and firewall policies are the most valuable features of this solution.

I think it's a good product but we've had some problems with their support and service. From the beginning of this year, I haven't been able to reach their support. 

Last year, the support wasn't bad but this year I wanted to renew their license, but I can't reach anybody from their company.

We don't have any plans to replace them but we haven't been able to renew a license. 

Sometimes there is a conflict with Windows 10 updates. There is a Windows server or Windows workstation startup after installing the new Windows update. We contacted Microsoft and they said the device caused an issue.

We have been using Symantec for eight years.

We were using some traditional licensing. Our company is a nonprofit, so we have a different price pricing model.

The most important thing is the cloud management. I would like to see behavior analysis. These two things will be most valuable to the user.

I would rate it a seven out of ten. 

On-premises

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.

On-premises

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.

On-premises

The primary use case of this solution is as an antivirus.

Some important features that are included are the built-in firewall and device control.

They are lacking the visibility that you get in a heuristical, next-generation AI product. 

In the next release, I would like to see any of the features the next generation antivirus and GAV products have, especially the heuristical and the behavioral analysis. It looks at the behavior of the endpoint, and that is how it identifies something that is not to your normal pattern of working.

I have been using it for a year.

There are no issues in rolling it out. Rather, it's more in reporting.

One time we had an issue with knowing a true endpoint time and the reporting. There was a conflict with what was in the console. I think that it was a glitch in verifying the device count.

I have not contacted technical support.

It's a great product at what it does, but it's lacking the advanced malware detection capabilities.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

Some of the features that were important were a built-in firewall and device control.

They lack the visibility you get in a heuristical, artificial, AI type of product, like a next-gen antivirus. They lack the visibility of what's happening that your next-gen solutions offer.

I have been using Symantec for a year. My company has had it for a while, but I don't know exactly how long.

My staff has used support but I personally have not. 

I don't think there's really any issues rolling it out, it's more in the reporting. The one time we had an issue was with knowing a true endpoint count and the reporting. There was a conflict with what was in the console, I think it was a glitch.

In the next release, I would like to see any of the features that the next generation antivirus and GAV products have, like the heuristical, the behavioral analysis. Because it will set the behavior of the endpoint and that's how it identifies something that is not normal to your pattern of working.

I will give it a seven out of ten because it's a great product at what it does, but it's lacking the advanced malware detection capabilities.

It's good at detecting signature-based stuff and stopping that, but what Symantec misses, CrowdStrike would pick up. I'm hoping to move CrowdStrike 100% to get rid of Symantec.

It needs to die. In my opinion, Symantec was a really great security company, 10, 15 years ago. They went out, they bought all the great tools and then they never did anything with them. So they've just fallen behind and there's nothing that's going to work now to bring them back up the date that's going to regain user confidence.

In order to improve, I would like to see active remediation tools, where I can connect to systems and do things directly on the system without having to leave the tool.

I have been using this solution for five years. 

I would rate it a two out of ten because I think it is outdated, ancient, lacking the features that the current solutions have. And unfortunately, I think it's being passed around so much that Symantec's now Broadcom, that nobody's given it any of the attention or the love that it needs to keep it a viable solution. Ultimately, I think it's going to die.

We use this solution for its  antivirus capabilities   . It is an on-premises deployment.

Centralized & localized control of client machines ,  using the SEPM dashboard.

The most valuable feature of this solution is the antivirus and the protection against Ransomware/Malware/Zero day attacks and device control

I would really like some of the features that are available in Kaspersky Enterprise to be available in the client version of this solution.

In the next release of this solution, I would like to see more to do with malware, encryption technology, and controlling mobile devices. I would like to be able to protect my wireless equipment at that level.

I have been using this solution for 12 years.

I've had no issues with stability in the ten years that I have been using it.

This product is being pushed the maximum, and we are using it every day.

It is stable, and once you put in the policies, it does what it is supposed to do.

From my experience, I find scaling this solution is difficult. You have to work your way around it. It takes some time getting used to the admin dashboard before you can make any changes.

We have about sixty users in the company. Two of them are administrators and the remaining are end-users.

Technical support for this solution is ok. I have no issues with them.

We did not use another solution prior to using Symantec.

From my point of view, the initial setup of this solution was pretty easy.

Only one person is required for the maintenance and to handle support assistance. Everything is done remotely. You just push the changes across the network.

I performed the deployment myself, and it takes about an hour, or perhaps two hours at most.

Considering the features, the price of this solution is average. We pay our licensing fees on a yearly basis, and everything is included in that price. Whether it is via email or phone call, they do what needs to be done.

Evaluating fortigate client antivirus and security features 

My recommendation is that people should try this product.

In using this solution, I have learned a lot about our security and what needs to be done.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

On-premises

This solution has been installed within a LAN/WAN topology, with slightly more than 300 clients, give or take. 

The firewall, malware, and anti-virus protection have earned its keep in times past by catching the unexpected. At the same time, illustrating in real-time the status of managed clients within the array. 

The Server Console is a very helpful tool for managing and administrating. 

Managements' number one item on the "Wish List" would have to do with the real-time scan of external media inserted into any client.

A secondary concern is software compatibility with other important networked tools: WSUS, Desktop Central, etc, without a large number of exception rules. 

We have been using Symantec Endpoint Protection for roughly three years.

I have used various types of anti-virus software but I have fallen in love Symantec Endpoint Protection as it eliminated all the problems I used to have.

At the University of Zimbabwe, it is now the only antivirus that is used by both students and staff after careful consideration by the University IT department. It provides end-to-end protection for computers and laptops.

1. Ever since we started using the app, we no longer have problem computers being constantly frozen-up because of viruses.
   
2. We had spent a long time fighting the Shortcut virus that was spreading around the campus but it was eliminated after we started using this solution.

The most amazing qualities of Symantec Endpoint Protection is that it provides a total solution to all virus problems. I am an accounts person but ever since I started using this software I no longer have any problems with viruses.

It is only available to use on computers with higher-end specs.

I think the software should be compatible with all versions of all computers, even earlier models. This would allow all clients to be included, which is important for those who cannot afford to buy the latest computers.

I have been using this solution for three years.

I find QRadar and the Active Threat Defense the most valuable. The ATP, Active Theft Protection, is very good. They've got very solid detection rates from P2. Those and some of the other programs are very valuable.

The Centralized Management could be improved. The deployment is very limited. They can improve on reporting as well. If they can improve threat incident analysis, that would be great.

The solution itself is pretty comprehensive at this stage, and the features that we would like to be added to these are available as separate purchases, so I wouldn't that there's anything new that I need in there, they probably covered all the bases at this stage.

The solution is one hundred percent stable.

The solution is completely scalable.

Technical support is okay. I'm not completely satisfied with them.

The initial setup is pretty simple. I believe that the tools that are available to do the deployment are not up to standard as compared to some of the other products, and we deal with all the other products. We know exactly what is available and what is possible. Compared to the other products available, Symantec is lacking in that department.

I've been using this solution for more than twenty years. While Endpoint Protection has only existed for the past couple of years, the Symantec antivirus, I have been working with more than twenty years. It used to be Symantec antivirus and then it changed a couple of years ago to Symantec Endpoint Protection. So, we've been using it obviously since its inception.

In terms of advice to others, I would say to partner with somebody that actually knows how the product is implemented and configured. Get a partner that has the technical knowledge and can give onsite technical guidance, or support. All of these Endpoint Protection solutions are getting very complex. It's not a simple antivirus that you just simply deploy to get a few viruses. It is becoming a very complex thing to implement. People buy the products, and they don't know how to implement them, so they go and slap them there and then they get burnt and they get attacked by a virus or threat or something. They get their fingers burnt and then they say the product is rubbish, but it's not the product, it's that the product was not correctly configured. So, when buying a product, you need to partner with someone who can actually provide you with support on the product.

They're one of my favorite products and we're actively working with Kaspersky, McAfee, Sophos, ESET, and Sophos. Palo Alto is my favorite firewall. But on the antivirus or Endpoint Protection side, I have the greatest of confidence in Symantec. It's something I would use at home or in the business. That's what we use to protect the business, so it's probably the product I have the most confidence in.

I would rate this solution ten out of ten.

I primarily use the solution for endpoint protection.

This product provides complete laptop and desktop protection from cyber attacks.

The features I've found the most valuable are the scanning and the reporting.

The reporting function definitely has room for improvement. If Symantec can provide us with the overall API for accessing and reporting, that would be great. The reporting function needs to be more user-friendly in general. I think we have too much technical level reporting, I think it would be better to have more user and usage types of reporting.

I would like to see in the next release focus more on unusual behavior so that we can know how the end results are behaving and if they are in the clear.

They should also provide users with some sort of training videos, for how to use the solution.

I've been using the solution for one year.

The solution is very stable. The majority of the users are end users. Other than that we have IT staff that use it, so we have approximately three thousand users.

The scalability is good.

I'd rate technical support as average.

Previously we used Trend Micro. The features were not as good as Symantec, so we switched.

The initial setup was complex. There are too many moving parts. You have to install one bit, then install the reporting function, then install the dashboard, and so on. Then you have to open the manual and check it. If it is not correct the system will restart itself and cause so many complications, every part is pretty complex.

We did not use an integrator, we did it ourselves.

I would rate this solution four and a half out of ten.

The features I find the most valuable are the protection, the encryption, and the DLP.

The pricing is a little bit more expensive than other competitors, if you compare it to Kaspersky, for example, or McAfee.

The detection and response can always be improved.

I've been using this solution for one year.

I find the solution stable.

I found the solution scalable, and we faced no issue regarding that. We have approximately four thousand users.

The technical support is good. They are not the best, but they are good.

We were using Kaspersky but we decided to go for Symantec because Kaspersky was missing the DLP part.

The initial setup was straightforward.

I implemented myself using the help of the distributor.

This solution is more costly than some competing solutions.

I don't know what exactly could be inside the product to make it much more powerful. What I was looking for specifically at that time was the encryption part and the DLP and they were doing great.

Simply put, it is the one product that's an integrated holistic solution for the whole security suite for an endpoint. However, there is no such thing as a one hundred percent security solution.

I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.

I like the ability to push it to a client, centrally from central consoles.

I like the integration of Active Directory. I like the ability for it to auto-enroll. You can add machines to the Active Directory and when it configures right, it automatically installs to those machines.

The firewall features are pretty good as well. I like the firewall and the intrusion prevention features, and just the basic anti-malware and anti-virus seems to be pretty effective as well.

Sometimes the interface can be a bit cumbersome, and maybe the help features. If you're not charged with administering the product and you don't do it every day it can sometimes be difficult to remember how to do the simple basic things, so some type of help or guidance for your most regular or frequent tasks would be good. Something similar to what the product called Serviceaid has. 

I also think that the website itself should be improved. They have so many products that when you actually look on their website and you look for helpful guidance you just tend to get lost because they seem to have so much going on. So, basically, a bit more intuitive help and guidance features, as well as more intuitive service information.

Some type of solution for mobile devices would be good. For mobile devices, it's drawing from a Windows-based client, so for many core clients for OSX and Linux machines, those OS could be integrated directly. There's no client for mobile devices except for IOS and Android devices.

I've been using this solution for ten years.

It's not very stable I don't think. I'll didn't have any problems when it did not work, or episodes of crashing or anything but yeah, it's not very stable.

We don't do daily scans, we do weekly scans but it is used daily and obviously, it's got a real-time scan so it's in constant use.

I think it's very scalable, and I think you can manage the implementation as long as it's sort of implemented on the right sort of baseline platform, etc. It makes it pretty easy to scale up and add lots more users and even more servers to the implementation. We do plan to add more clients onto the system in the future.

I haven't had much cause to use technical support. I might have used them only a few times. The support is okay, it's just difficult to actually find the contact numbers or email addresses because their site is so cumbersome.

I wouldn't say it was straightforward. There wasn't anything complex, either. Once you've done it once or twice, which I have, it's not as complex as it could be. It really depends on the size of the installation you're doing and the number of clients, etc. So obviously the bigger the installation, the more thought you need to put into it. I'd probably lean towards saying it was complex, it's not straightforward.

We have approximately fifty users and only one admin, so I'm the only person who administers here. I think the largest installation I've had would probably be about 1000G's with about one, two, three, four, five, six, no about seven administrators, but yeah and here it's just about fifty devices.

We do the implementation by ourselves.

I would advise anyone to make sure they do their required reading before they implement. Before implementation, you need to do the reading on the best practices because obviously if you've got a larger implementation then you need to think about a few concerns. You need to think about resilient managing services as well. Also, before purchasing,  do the due diligence and look at alternative products to see if there's something else that would suit your needs better.

This solution is a bit cumbersome. Some of the things they can make them easier to do, and also because their website is a bit clunky, so makes it difficult to find the solutions you need.

I would rate this solution as an eight out of ten.

The most valuable features of this solution are that it is really easy to use, and it is secure. It will attach to the network and work through my other devices.

The product is affordable.

Reporting in this solution needs improvement. The product could be improved if it repeated data, and if it showed that data better in the analytics.

I've been using this solution for six years.

The system is very stable.

Scalability can become difficult in the user area. I think that it's costly to add the new hard disk. It's hard to add it. We have about forty users on the solution right now.

I haven't had any problems with technical support at all. I've never contacted them.

The setup was very straightforward.

I think it's a very good solution for sales networks. I have wanted to try the cloud solution for Symantec but I don't know if it has been already added or not.

I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.

The feature I find most useful is the console for reporting.

The overall quality of the product needs to be improved because with the last session we had several issues with new versions. Also, the solution needs better protections.

I've been using the solution for more than 5 years.

The new version is not very stable with the latest version of Windows 10. We got a lot of crashes with this solution. 

We have about 1000 users.

It's very easy to scale.

I'm pretty satisfied with technical support.

The initial setup was quite complex. Even though it was complex, I was satisfied with the setup.

We used an integrator to implement the solution. 

We are using a pretty old solution for Symantec, so I would say the product is not quite up to date with new threats. Look for a new model of the solution. There is a new version, for example, that we don't use yet. Or you can look for a better solution for current threats.

I would rate this solution seven out of 10.

I am working as an endpoint security consultant. I'm not only working on Symantec. I also work with Kaspersky, McAfee, and all other vendors. I found Symantec is the best.

Symantec is top of all of the antivirus tools. I couldn't find any single incident that happened. Symantec was not the leader previously, McAfee and Kaspersky were. This is a new game.

In Symantec Endpoint Protection, the most valuable feature I like is the good performance.

With Symantec, I always know this tool will be reliable and with the latest protection.

The device control level and application control level should improve. I am finding a lot of issues when I block the devices, like a printer or scanner. 

In the classes of the devices for the application control, the most important issue is the hashing. Nowadays all the vendors, like Cisco firewalls, are detecting threats with the hashes. 

Symantec has this option that we can block them always by the hashes but the problem is that sometimes Symantec detects these hashes and is not consistent. These two parts should improve. The rest is always awesome. These two parts are very critical because I found a problem in application and device control.

Symantec Endpoint has a perfect agent. It's going to be how many agents you can combine in resources. In the new releases, if they create a single agent to improve the control incrementally, it would be better.

If you want to deploy ATP, you should have a separate event. You have to install separate events. With Symantec Endpoint Protection, any other protection should be installed, then configure the warnings. It does not ask for any new agent to install on the client machine. 

A single agent is enough. Symantec will get a lot of popular support from the industry because people don't like to install agents. For the ATP, you have to install separate events. For the Endpoint, you have to install separate events. If you install all the separate events, it is a huge load on a Windows machine. People start complaining.

If Symantec wants to improve, they should have a single event for all their products, like ATP, DLP, and Endpoint Protection.

I have been using Symantec Endpoint Protection for more than ten years.

I have been using Symantec since 2007. I didn't have any issues regarding even the updates and the migration to the new version. I didn't have any problems, but with the other vendors, I found a lot of problems.

On Windows, this is very fine and perfect, but for the Linux it needs improvement. Whenever I install it on Linux, I found a lot of problems. Even on the Mac as well. 

Kaspersky has Android support as well, but in Symantec, they still don't have support for Android. You should have Mac and Android device support too. 

The Endpoint solution should have support for all types of devices. Symantec has only Windows support (which is the very best), but for the Mac, I found some errors.

It should improve Mac and Android support like Windows device support. The protection of Windows level support is very tight and strong.

The technical support is also very good. Any time that I open a case with them, they have three types of support levels. If I put it on two, immediately they call me, or if nobody is online, there are the chat agents.

You can start and use the chat for support. The support is very good. But Kaspersky has 24-hour support. You cannot stop your business continuity. We can't tell the people they will come online later. Other than this case, Symantec is very good.

The initial setup is straightforward, not complex. For me, it's very easy.

In my personal experience, most people use Symantec. In my whole life, I couldn't find any problems with Symantec. In the ransomware protection, though, I found many issues. 

Many people were having infections but the virus sometimes was not detected. Even the Kaspersky software could not detect it, but if I install Symantec on any client I couldn't find the ransomware. The problem is Symantec is more expensive than other vendors. Kaspersky is in comparison very cheap.

If you are working in an organization and you have 10,000 users, if you compare Symantec with the other vendors you will find only a small difference in the price.

I always tell people if you have a budget, if you have money, if you need stability, go with Symantec. If you think that your data is sensitive, you can not worry about the money.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate Symantec Endpoint Protection a nine.

Our primary use for this solution is for antivirus, website protection, and malware protection.

The most valuable feature for our organization is the antivirus, as our staff is the target of zero-day malware and viruses.

Better communication and coordination with Microsoft would help to prevent delays that are frequent when operating system updates are released. As it is now, when a new build from Microsoft comes out, we get warnings to say that certain applications are not compatible. We sometimes just have to wait until a new version of this solution is released in order for it to work properly. One of the problems is that Microsoft releases updates often, and sometimes they don't tell anybody. This can lead to the whole configuration being corrupted.

I would like to see a hybrid version of this solution that covers both in-house and cloud-based servers. 

We have been using this solution for six years.

This solution is very stable. It is "install and forget".

Once you install the solution on the server, it is very quick when it comes to updating the clients. Specifically, it sends packages really quickly to all of the clients to ensure that they have the latest build. It is transparent and quick.

This solution is constantly in use. It runs 24/7.

We have between sixty and seventy people, both IT and non-IT staff, who use this solution. The latter are primarily working in Microsoft Office and SharePoint environments.

The technical support is ok. You create a ticket and depending on what the issue is, and whether it is an emergency, they give it a level such as one, two, or three. After this, they take action and they are pretty good.

Most of the solutions to things like installation issues or other incompatibilities, they are quick on creating "How to" pages in their help.  

My understanding is that we were running Kaspersky before this solution was implemented, but I was not here at the time.

The initial setup is straightforward. Also, we have just updated, and the installation over the top of the old one was perfect. It saved all of the data that we had configured from the beginning, did a backup, installed the new version, and deleted the only one. It was good and simple.

The deployment takes approximately one hour, and one person can handle both deployment and maintenance.

We performed the installation in-house.

This solution protects us and we do not get any viruses, so this can be considered the return on our investment.

We receive a discounted price for this solution because we are a non-profit organization. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees.

I was not at this company when the solution was selected.

My advice for anybody implementing this solution is to consider the rules that you want to define. Installation is straightforward, but you can make it simple, or you can make it pretty complex.

For example, you can set up specific groups for in-house or external users. You can also install clients that only touch base occasionally, such as logging into the internal environment once per year. It can also be used on Virtual Machines, where the client's resources are limited or restricted. In a hosted environment, it does not have to be installed on the individual VMs. It can run on the host and it will scan everything.

There is also a cloud version of this product out now, which covers people who are more cloud-based.

So far, I find that this product works pretty good.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

SEP was used mainly to protect desktops/laptops of students, faculty, and staff (about thirty-five hundred in total).

Symantec was also used as messaging Gateway for email filtering (moved to Office 365).

SEP was very useful for protecting devices that belonged to students, faculty, and staff. However, it was a source of problems for some users, as some services/apps in their devices were blocked/frozen.

The most valuable feature is the virus and malware detection capability.

This solution needs better compatibility with services and applications.

Five years.

We are using this solution for endpoint protection.

This solution has helped us because it is really useful for blocking all kinds of viruses.

The support for virus checking in containers is very useful.

We have also created policies to assist with blocking evasive applications.

We are also using the Symantec Messaging Gateway.

If we install a client's software in our location, such as Microsoft Office or Adobe reader, we would like to have these endpoints protected.

Nine years.

The solution is stable.

We have had some little issues and file problems when we are logging the calls through the technical team.

Sometimes, when we are creating a new policy, some of the clients are not being updated with the latest policy.

We have approximately one thousand users with this solution.

Technical support for this solution is good. We speak to the technical support team directly.

I started with the company after this solution was implemented.

The initial setup for this solution is easy. Not a problem.

Our deployment took less than fifteen minutes, and a single engineer is enough for the maintenance.

The Symantec technical team handled the implementation for us.

The licensing is calculated on a monthly basis, but we use a three-year renewal. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees.

They did evaluate other solutions including Sophos, ESET, McAfee, and Kaspersky. We did not find these as user-friendly.

The support is very good. It is easy to manage all of the clients and deploy new policies.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

My primary use case is endpoint antivirus/antimalware security on Windows computers, on and off my office network.

Initially, it provided easy centralized management of policies and devices. Threat protection has always worked well.

I originally posted the most valuable feature is centralized management - after consideration, I realized this is not accurate. I've used the on-premise and cloud versions of SEP.  I prefer cloud versions as it is centralized and easy to manage, but every cloud-managed solution does this. I have many cloud managed solutions I use, but I've found SEP to be quirky and inefficient at best. My personal experience is the protection works well. I haven't had an infected computer in years (managing 300 devices now, more over the years). The problem with the protection is I've encountered far too many computers where the licensing fails at some point after installation without warning or notice. You have to check each computer routinely to verify the license is good and the agent is updating. This directly impacts the core reliability of the product since license "expiration" (failure) prevents the agent from updating.

This latest version upgrade/migration over the last year has been atrocious.

There have been numerous support issues and calls with Sr. VPs at Symantec, who were always understanding about the problems, but the product has proven unreliable to install and manage. The protection itself seems as solid, but if devices are losing their licensing without notice for no reason, it's only a matter of time before they become compromised.

The bottom line is that when it comes to management, reliability of management, reporting, alerting, installation, and licensing, if these don't work reliably you can't trust the product's security capability.

I've seen way too many outages and "maintenance" events in the last year on the new platform to consider it stable.

This latest version has proven unreliable for management and installation.

I would no longer recommend this product as a viable security solution.

We are a partner or distributor of Symantec Endpoint Protection. We use this solution for antivirus and cyber threat protection. Internally, we are using it to ensure that we receive security against all known attack vectors with efficacy, cyber defense at scale, high-performance client, and on-premises management architecture.

Endpoint Protection has improved our operations by protecting our servers from potential cyber threats.

The solution offers a Device Control policy to block all USB thumb drives and all USB hard drives. We use this feature for some areas here in the company and it's been great for us because these areas contain very important information and we are doing everything we can to avoid breaches, data theft, and data leaks.

We must have complete dissolution with advance care protection but we are finding out that we need more Symantec technical specialists. We have identified a need to hire at least one more technical specialist familiar with Symantec to improve our solutions capabilities.

Additionally, an endpoint detection response feature would be great but not with an additional license, it should be included as an additional feature. We have identified this as a solution that our customers are very interested in, but they don't want to purchase additional subscriptions.

One to three years.

The stability is great.

The scalability of the solution is great.

Currently, we have around 400 employees using this solution.

We haven't used their technical support. We receive support directly from Symantec here in Mexico and they are pretty responsive.

There were difficulties at the beginning with the setup. I wasn't directly involved with the initial setup but from what I heard, from the IT department, is that they encountered issues when attempting to create differentials between the principle, directors, and manager groups.

The deployment and improvements took two months to implement because we have branch offices all over the place.

Deployment required three people and support only requires one person; the IT manager.

Compared to other products and brands here in Mexico, the price is okay, somewhere in the middle. Our solution is unique in that it can adapt to a variety of pricing and licensing constraints considering we have the corporate, government, and academic mandates. The account managers here in Mexico always give us support in the form of applicable discounts and adjustments.

The management console is great. We only have only one person managing and controlling the console. It seems to be very user-friendly.

On a scale of one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best, I would rate this product a nine. To make it a ten, it should be free. The cost is restrictive to some degree.

We work with Symantec DLP and Endpoint Protection as our main security solutions. We have deployed Endpoint Protection for a few customers and for our own organization as a test: Endpoint Protection, Email Security, and DLP.

We are a partner but we are a user as well. Our company has more than 100 employees and our group, which is made up of different companies, has more than 400 employees, and we are planning to deploy it for our group. Our company is the system integrator, while other companies within the group are service providers or different types of service integrators for areas like fintech.

It has improved our productivity and, from a security point of view, we feel safe from spam. For endpoint protection, we are not facing problems now.

Less than one year.

I cannot say the stability is excellent, but it is very good.

Scalability, of course, is good. They acquire different companies sometimes and they adapt their different technologies.

We get good support from Symantec. We find that during integration, if we face any problems, we get a good response from the OEM and we solve them very quickly. Technical support is very good, they have a toll-free number.

We didn't have anything at this scale. We just used Kaspersky as an antivirus, but we are not using it now, we are using Symantec Endpoint Protection which covers everything. Symantec is better, it covers more requirements. Antivirus solutions only cover some basics, but Endpoint Protection is the next generation. It covers antivirus, spamware, ransomware; all this is covered through Endpoint Protection.

We selected Symantec because it is at the top of industry reviews. We also know that globally, Symantec spends a lot of money for R&D and we believe it will remain up to the mark.

We also use Symantec Email Security which improves our productivity and protects our valuable data. Email Isolation is the only feature which the others don't have. When we use it we find that we are free from phishing mail, etc.

The setup was straightforward. It takes very little time. It's not that complex.

I have not actually done an ROI calculation, but from what I understand, considering the cost and complexity and the technical support and deployment, if I consider all these things, the return on investment is good.

Pricing and licensing for our country is very good. It's not that expensive and the endpoint security is very good. It's not as cheap as some others, but they are not as good.

 We are evaluating Imperva, as we have some customer requests to do a PoC on that, as well as other product like F5 and A10. We have the PoC boxes for A10 for load-balancing and DDoS. We also have some NGFWs, like Check Point - we are doing a PoC and testing it as a firewall and as endpoint protection. CyberArk is another among the products we are focusing on for our customers.

Our market is very aware of Symantec, A10, and F5. F5 is predominant and, obviously, there is Cisco as well, which is a dominant company from a firewall point of view. We don't push all of their security products, like FirePower etc., because we understand that they are not a leader for firewalls. Palo Alto, Check Point, and Fortinet have been leaders in the last few years. 

But we are focusing on Check Point and Palo Alto. They are slowly growing and customers are buying their NGFWs and their endpoint protection or some other security product they have, for double-protection.

Since we have done two very successful PoCs, one live PoC for my largest customer, which is in government, and another for a private company, I recommend that other customers take the Symantec solution as their main security: I prefer Endpoint, Email Security, and DLP. Symantec has other solutions which I don't prefer. They have network analyzers and WAF but I prefer the Imperva WAF, which is better.

In our company, most of the 100 people are using this solution and their roles range from management to normal end-user. We have three staff, maximum, for maintenance, and their roles are IT administrator, and system managers. We do plan to increase our usage.

I would rate this product at eight out of ten, based on the technical support, cost, and their local presence as well.

It's an antivirus solution. We need something centralized because we have hundreds of desktops and laptops. We have taken this solution to manage antivirus, security, etc., all together.

Symantec, as an antivirus solution, makes things far better on the management and the vulnerability scanning sides. From a management point of view, it is good.

The fact that it has centralized management is the most valuable feature.

In addition, the support from Symantec is very important. It is a global company and they give very good support. That is an important factor here because we are sitting in Africa and getting support on time can be a bit tougher. In this way, Symantec is a good fit for us.

Also, the console is very user-friendly. It is easy to understand, easy to play with it, easy to make up policies. And you can customize your policies. It's not like there's a set of policies that has been set out. Other products also have this kind of feature, but it is more user-friendly and a better product with better support.

We have talked to Symantec about a feature that is lacking. Any external device which is inserted into a computer should be subject to an auto-scan policy, to automatically scan it before accepting the device. Let's say I have a pen drive and there is a Trojan virus for which the signature is not updated. If the signature is not updated, then the system should automatically scan and understand that there is a foreign file and it should be blocked immediately. That is the one feature that I feel is missing. They need to make it more user-friendly, so that when anyone puts in a USB stick it will be scanned, popping up any problems before it is used. This is a feature they need to work on, in my opinion.

Three to five years.

It is very stable.

For us, scalability is fine, there is no problem, no restriction, other than we cannot go beyond our licenses. If we are extending it, of course we need to pay for it. But it's not like something is restricting or blocking it. The scalability is okay. We have connected more than 1,200 computers and they are working well.

We have one staff member who maintains the solution. He is our network security guy and he is also Symantec-certified. We also have second-level support from Symantec. If anything is needed we get support from them. We pay them yearly for that.

Right now, we don't have plans to increase our usage of the solution.

The technical support is fine, no problem.

The initial setup is straightforward. I don't think it is complex. I have long experience as a system administrator. For me, as a technical person, it was straightforward. We definitely took support from Symantec and they helped us a lot in the deployment process.

Since it was a long time back, I don't remember exactly how long the deployment took. We keep updating it now. But I don't think it took more than three working days, including deployment and automating installation for all the workstations. We shifted from another antivirus to this one.

We had help from Symantec and their partners.

We have definitely seen return on investment.

We pay on a yearly basis and have a three-year contract.

Understand your environment and what kind of security product you're looking for. Every environment has different requirements. Everybody has different kinds of file formats and data classifications.

For Symantec is a good product for our environment. It helps us a lot. It provides seamless operation. It's not like we have to intervene every day. People are monitoring and, if they find a machine that is not working or not connected, they create a remote connection to see what the problem is and to fix it.

We are using Symantec Enterprise, but you have new threats coming into the world market and you definitely have to be up to date. We found information on IT Central Station and we set up a comparison of the technologies.

Every antivirus, in my experience, is only successful 95 percent of the time. No antivirus can tell you that you are 100 percent protected. The important part is how the backend works. If the backend is giving you support, they answer immediately and help you, that is important. In that way, Symantec is a good product and we are happy with it.

A couple of our customers have deployed and are using Symantec Endpoint Protection.

I joined COMPAREX eight months back, and they have been using Symantec Endpoint Protection for two and a half years.

Symantec has cloud-based endpoint protection, so whether a user is off the network or on the network, the endpoint will be protected by the cloud.

It has very unique features, which are not available with other vendors. E.g., there is a feature called SONAR.

You can integrate it using ATP, so all the endpoints communicate to each other on the security platform. 

17 million sensors are fitted all over the world. 

About four years back, Symantec's signature was very heavy and their signature patch was around 200MB or 300MB files.

Less than one year.

Symantec Endpoint Protection is stable product, if you compare it other vendors, like McAfee or Trend Micro. McAfee was acquired by the Intel, who is very not strong in security patterns.

Our German team manages the maintenance.

The scalability is okay. I would rate it as a nine out of ten. Users are a bit afraid of the integration with ATP, as it is increasing scan times when downloading up to two to seven seconds.

We have around 2500 employee over all the globe. All the endpoints on laptops or desktops are running Symantec Endpoint Protection. Apart from that, we have multiple customers who have deployed the Symantec Endpoint Protection solution.

The technical support is very good. They have an Indian support team, so there are no delays in receiving support.

Their R&D teams are very strong in remediation.

We were previously using Trend Micro Smart Protection Complete.

The initial setup is very straightforward, not complex.

Deployment time depends on the user size. E.g., 200 users can be implemented in two days.

We have a dedicated delivery team to deploy the solution.

It is very easy to configure. There are no challenges when implementing this solution.

We have seen ROI.

Each annual client license is around 1200 or 1600 INR.

Zero-day threat or advanced attacks should be part of the endpoint. The product should not require you to buy a separate license.

It is a very good product. They are a very strong leader in the Indian market.

We are a solution provider for end customers like Telco, banks, etc. We are also a Symantec partner and reseller. Not only do we use it but we also position this solution for customers.

We have a telecom company that was using Kaspersky and they still had some vulnerabilities and attacks and we discussed with them and succeeded in presenting this solution. The one we proposed was Symantec Protection Suite, SPS Enterprise Edition, for about more 1,100 endpoints, exactly 1,100 users. We also implemented the mailer for Symantec Messaging Gateway for spam protection. Until now they used the solution and they are very satisfied with it. We started with SEP 12.1 but later they upgraded to SEP 14.

We had a bank that we were working with and they had a challenge in which they needed to protect against vulnerability. They had previously used Kaspersky, we discussed and told them that Symantec is capable and is able to address their specific challenges. We gave them a trial version. When they started they found it very easy; not easy to implement but easy to use. We started with the headquarters here and later we also implemented it for all the subsidiaries in the region, in other countries. They have a centralized solution, so they can help other countries in management. 

We had to position Symantec in big companies like Telco and several banks. With this solution, you also get the Protection Suite, endpoint protection, SEP, and you also have the Mail Security and Messaging Gateway. It's really integrative and our customers find it very valuable. It addresses almost all of the challenges on security for endpoint messaging. Symantec is going to be used much more because of its features.

The mobility solution should be improved. You need to separately purchase mobile, like a smartphone with Android and so on, you need to buy it separately with SAP, for example. It would be better for the user to use the same solution with all devices, even laptops, desktops, server and so on. They should also use the same endpoints for mobile devices. 

There are a few negative points. They should separate the feature for each separate solution for mobile devices. The second one is about the price, it's expensive. Finally, the third would be the complexity of implementation.

More than five years.

It is very stable. Even the customers don't really complain compared to other solutions. 

It is very scalable.  

Their technical support is reactive. When you have an issue, you just log a service request and you can find an engineer to help you. I would rate their technical support a nine out of ten. We're very confident that whenever we have an issue we can find the solution. It also depends on the support you choose. We have 24-hour support.

We also use McAfee because of the scalability. It had the issue that it consumed too many resources and for vulnerabilities, sometimes there are some direct varieties you cannot delete.

The initial setup is a little bit complex. You need to have a certain level of training before being able to set up it. What is nice is that you can remotely install the set up on all of the infrastructures from the server, the SAPM, that is the Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager, you can manage all the endpoints but it's not really easy to set up or to configure the policies. Sometimes customers find it a little bit difficult to implement for the configuration because you need some knowledge to implement the feature.

The setup depends on the issues of the network. The bottom line is if the network is really mastered, the policies on the network are really mastered in around three to four days for the new companies.

We only need one person who is well trained to manage and support this solution. 

It's not planned yet to switch to another product but we can potentially implement Cisco as we are also a Cisco partner and we find it sometime interesting when requested by the customer. But we push and we recommend Symantec.

This solution is very effective. It can really address the challenges but you need to have training in order to be able to effectively implement it. If you don't fully know how to implement it you can't use the features very usefully.

I would rate it a nine out of ten because of its ability to address challenges and because of the completeness of the solution.

Standard use case: firewall, malware, app/device control, reporting of compliance, etc. We use other features too.

A secure stable product, and good customer service of this product from the vendor. Waiting to see how the cloud version pans out.

• Application/device control. Wish encryption detection was integrated though. 
• Good standard malware detection via classic defs and newer heuristic controls.

• Device encryption status and coding off of said status. 
• Better inherent checks against duplicate IDs.

More than five years.

The most valuable features of this solution are deployment, management and finding sources of potential viruses that hack the system.

I think the CPU dependency should be enhanced. In addition, some device control features are in need of enhancements. 

More than five years.

I find it is the most reliable solution in the market. 

• Primary endpoint protection for our office. 

It was replaced with my MSP's contracted solution, but that's being replaced by our own solution.

It protected well enough, but we ran Malwarebytes in conjunction to help protect against zero-day exploits/malware issues that occasionally slipped through.

We were disappointed that we were stuck with its local admin server for so long when other solutions had cloud management.

• An easier management portal
• Setting up and managing profiles was overly complex
• An easier cloud management portal would be appreciated.

Three to five years.

The primary key is because it doesn't impact much in the performance of the endpoint.

For me, the end point is almost a commodity. So, an advantage with Symantec is the integration. The integration with our two directories for taking control to administrate people, and then follow up with the segmentation to different people. To be able to manage a subset of the endpoint registering the solution, the distribution is in geographical sounds. The dashboard can be emailed, and I can receive the solution.

I find the most valuable features are the security features that have been developed in the past few years. 

A good improvement would be altering the console in the console manager. Sometimes we need to add and improve the security to access to the console because the indicators and we can take management activities into the console, and it's, nice to have to improve the security access to the console.

Three to five years.

It is very stable. I do not have any problems with it at all. 

I only use the technical support once or twice a year. I find that sometimes they are a bit slow to find a solution. 

The most imprortant criteria for me to find a proper solution in this sphere are:

• Knowledge of the market
• Study of the solution

I also looked at McAffe, but I noticed that Symantec was the better performing solution when I researched respected user performance.

My primary use case for this is protecting the end user against cyber attacks. It is a simple product that is easily implemented on all of our hosts and servers.  It is especially helpful on our exchange server.

The Symantec product helps us protect ourselves against the Trojan horse. It reduces risk. As a financial institution, we are constantly at risk of attack.

I find the most valuable feature is that the product works on Linux and Microsoft Windows.  I think it is one of the best solutions to implement or host IPs.

In the future, I think there should be a sandboxing feature. Some of the most used endpoint protection does not include sandboxing. We cannot rely on URL filtering or IP repetition. Sometimes attacks can pass through the firewall.  

In addition, this product must be compatible with a VMware environment. Because most of our server has VMware. It seems that its not working very well with VMware.

Finally, they need to do some effort to make it a little bit sly. They have to make some improvement in order to not make the computer slow during all of the backend scanning.

More than five years.

It is a product that is simple and is working fine.

It is scalable because it is easy to use and it is fond of multiple features, using the management console.

I am not directly involved with the support team, one of my colleagues handles this communication.

The initial setup was very easy. It took about 2-3 minutes to be up and start downloading all updates on the PC's. You don't have to do anything more because it has an ability to work on Linux and Microsoft Windows products also.

The most important criteria for us is the price and the licensing. 

Our company used Norton Anti-Virus previously.  But, I was not at the company during that time.

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.

One to three years.

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.

One to three years.

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.

More than five years.

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.

Three to five years.

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 

Three to five years.

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

More than five years.

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.

More than five years.

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.

Antivirus solution for a global company with approximately 34,000 endpoints.                                

• Rather simple management
• Easy to deploy with medium maintenance.
• I believe to get the full benefits of Symantec Endpoint Protection, Symantec ATP is required. It provides quite a good overview of how threats have spread within the company.

• SEP, the entire suite of components, provides good endpoint protection.
• The IPS function (with no firewall needed to be installed in the SEP client) is quite good.
• The risk tracer, which can be enabled with the firewall installed, is also quite good.       

• SONAR could be improved. The false/positive rate is a little high.
• The firewall could be a little more "flexible". For example, it would be convenient if the firewall was allowed to "turn off" for hotspot environments.
• I find the documentation on Symantec.com to be not very updated. It seems like Symantec focuses more on their product than on documentation.
• My personal opinion is that Symantec has too many WS.Reputation.1 detections, which could cause important computers to malfunction.
• In a large environment with a significant amount of GUP's, it would be neat, if the client could "detect" the GUP in its own subnet. The client has some built-in intelligence at this point, but it does not seem to work properly. In an environment with many locations, whereas many of them have little bandwidth capacity (and no local datacenter), the LiveUpdate policy can end up becoming rather complicated.

Three to five years.

Endpoint Protection and Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) with Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR). One of the best solutions that I have ever tried.

Great solution for a company like mine. 

I like Symantec Endpoint Solution quite a lot. I hope it continues improving over time.

ATP is really impressive, and with EDR, it is the best solution I have ever known.

• Resources
• Front-end
• User experience

The Symantec Endpoint Manager is very difficult to use and extremely old.

More than five years.

Very well done, Symantec.

SEPM is a product for anti-virus security. It provides endpoint security for all client machines. It protects the client machines from malware or ransom attacks.

• Support
• Scalability
• Flexibility

It keeps our machines up-to-date with the definitions of the current zero day attacks, which happens in real-time scenarios. It protects our data and the clients' data, which can be secured by using this product.

I am happy to say that the Symantec comes into the picture where the issues are reported from the product, it might be a product bug or it might be a product defect. The product engineer works on this and the latest upgrade has it built into the peer cost, where we can upgrade our involvement and support our clients again.

So, we were having a problem in Version 14, where the client machines used to go into the health state and once it restarted, and never came back again. But as far as one of the defaults, this was reported and not an issue in new versions of Symantec 14 and SEMP 2. Apparently, this is works well for now, and we are happy with this.

More than five years.

It is a stable product.

The scalability of the product is good to where it has had the effect of increasing the workload by adding more machines, so I should have a good scaled back-up for this supporting both lines.

I would rate them a 10 out of 10. They supply good support and have a good knowledge. 

We did have a previous solution. They are all equal in giving the definitions on a timely routine, but the bandwidth extent was an issue for me. This is why we changed to Symantec.

Everything was straightforward. Nothing was complex. The installation was very user-friendly, where the engineer from Symantec had helped us to migrate this product from the older version to the newer version of Symantec.

What we have paid for this product is good value for the work and the services that they are providing to us.

We were going through the multiple products out on the market and we chose Symantec, because we had proposed multiple products to the client and the client had chosen Symantec for these two perspectives: One is for the best service and support, which Symantec provides, and the other is the pricing, which was a constraint for our client.

If you have a good involvement and maybe your clients are not connected to a domain, you can use this product. This is one advantage of this product, where you can use the product for protecting your machines. 

You need to keep track of the definitions and releases on a daily basis. This is one of the disadvantages.

• Central management
• Group update points (GUPs): They are valuable when throttling new updates through a slower WAN.

• Reduced burden of responding to alerts.
• Granular security lets lower level techs triage issues as they come in.

• Reporting without Altiris should be improved. 
• More cloud-based functionality, but that seems happening going forward. 
• It should have hypervisor level AV protection for VMs, so you do not need a client on the systems.

Five years supporting it.

Random issues with the apps. The built in firewall is tricky sometimes to get an app working in it.

No, I have not. I have always found Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP) to be scalable.

SONAR/Auto-Protect feature and Generic Exploit Mitigation: Can detect and prevent attacks that are exploring common software vulnerabilities. It monitors suspicious files that have behavior actions on memory, network, etc. The console and admin features are the main qualities.

In a large environment, it is a challenge to manage what areas can have specific rights or functions enabled or disabled, considering their needs. SEP had the opportunity to integrated Microsoft Active Directory structure into the SEP Admin console. Based on that, it was easier for me to apply specific policies for different business areas with different users. For instance: Enable USB rights only for C-level users/Disable SONAR feature for marketing team considering their needs.

Reports: It would be nice to have customized reports integrated on the main console with no additional DB server or BI server. Vulnerabilities: A vulnerability scan integrated with SEP would be important for the admin to understand the risk level they are facing and how to protect themselves...

Reports: SEP has built-in, on the console, many pre-configured reports
however, in a complexed environment, customers may would need customized
reports other than already provided by the console. In this case, it´s
possible to achieve them using an external data base and server. It would
be nice have a possibility to create customized reports without an external
server and data base, on the same SEP Admin console.

Vulnerabilities: It would be nice have on the SEP Admin console a feature
to measure the environment risk level using an OS and application
vulnerability scan where the administrator can analyze the risk, mitigate
the main risks, prioritized them and, over a Path Manager, correct them if
possible.

We have used this solution for six or seven years.

We had some issues during deployment. When doing a 40.000 McAfee migration nodes for SEP, I have faced challenges removing specific MacAfee features where SEP has no supportability. Compared to other vendors, like Kaspersky, they have scripts to remove all anti-virus solutions in the market before installing KL AV. And it is 100% possible to automate the job over the KL console.

Another challenge was customize all best practices vs. best protection for the company vs. not creating any performance impact on the customer.

Technical support is good. You can open tickets over international numbers, emails, or the website. If you open a ticket in your time-zone, you will work with a technical support representative in your local language. Otherwise, it will be in English.

We used Kaspersky and Bitdefender. We switched due to the company reputation, negotiation terms, commercial benefits, and technical results on the PoC.

The implementation was through a Symantec reseller. Considering the environment complexity, it is important to always plan, test, correct all errors, plan again, and attack departments with low risks, learn with the errors, adjust the plan, and move forward to next department.

Migrating a platform for a different one, most of the time, has a higher cost. However, considering the impact, risk , downtime, and principally, the low support quality provided that the oldest solution provided, were the main reason to start look forward for a newer one. These were the main reason that I migrated to Symantec. After a year of augmenting many open tickets and find internal customer satisfaction was really low, we convinced the board that it was time to migrate before having a huge impact for the business and company reputation.

Regarding the licensing, it was important negotiate a long contract to get a more attractive price, including advanced support in case of crisis.

Always try to include hours for the project in the budget. Always look for a specialized reseller who the vendor recognizes through a certified and approved reseller.

It is easy to implement and very stable. The AV device control and HIPS are very impressive. Just implement it and it's done. No troubleshooting efforts are required to make the policies work.

No overhead of troubleshooting after installation makes it my favourite.

It's a nice product. I think Symantec should work more precisely on minimizing database size and the live update size.

We have been recommending this product to our clients for about five years already.

No deployment is very simple.

Stability issues are very rare. It's a very stable product.

We have not encountered any issues with scalability.

Customer Service:

Customer Service is the best.

Technical Support:

I would give technical support a rating of 10/10. I love the way they support clients.

We do system integration and we have expertise in most products, but there is nothing like Symantec.

It was very simple to implement and very easy to use as well.

We have in-house team.

Yes,I would not name any :)

Just go through the implementation guide or some YouTube videos and the IT team can do it.

It's a single-agent installation with many features including

• wireless protection
• application control
• antivirus control.

Previously scans were taking a long time, hours or even a day. But nowadays, when the product scans, the time taken is only 15 to 20 minutes for a full scan. This is the main improvement, because it no longer affects the day-to-day work of users.

There was an administrative feature, which was available in the previous version, which has been removed. We would like that feature to be added again, because it helps the customer in many ways, and it's a very user-friendly feature.

Eight-plus years.

Stability is dependent on environment. It may not always be stable, because of environment. For example, there could be an issue in some environment, but in another environment there would not be an issue.

There are no limitations.

Eight out of 10.

From the start we have been using the same product.

It was straightforward.

We were evaluating other products, but according to this product's technology and the support, in these areas we thought that Symantec would be the right product.

One piece of advice I can give is, because in some environments it could behave properly, and in some environments it may not behave, you need to test it first, and then purchase.

I think that this product is very user-friendly. It has many technologies which can be easily accessed and available. There are many features. And there is a complete knowledge base article which is published to the public, so everyone has access to it.

• Fast deployment, even for highly distributed companies with centralized IT management using a distributed architecture.
• Intuitive management GUI, and very easy to learn.
• Excellent intrusion prevention features.

It has been a time saver for operational and reporting tasks related to Key Security Controls.

SEP provides visibility into threats and security incidents.

SEP can improve on virus detection, especially on zero-day threats.

Five years.

No. After finishing the product customizations, it worked as expected.

Not at all. Actually, it is far more scalable than other similar products.

The technical support is acceptable.

No.

It was a very fast deployment using the client detection features and a transparent Active Directory integration.

Trend Micro and Kaspersky.

I would advise to choose this product because it is very easy to deploy, has a performant host IPS and antivirus engine, and it provides a key source for security metrics.

This handles not just anti-virus, but a wide collection of other protective features including device and application control, network-based intrusions, and phishing attacks. It can also scan virtual machines too.

The reputation system relies on having a constant Internet connection for its operations.

There are three versions, include a cloud-based one, that are very flexible and easy to install and manage.

All the features are valuable.

Not applicable.

Administration, agent stability, and health.

I've used this solution for three years.

The client agent is not stable. I have to keep fixing it on four to five percent.

There were no scalability issues.

Technical support is average.

We evaluated Sophos Endpoint Security and Control. We switched due to the scalability and feature set.

The installation was straightforward.

I don't have any idea about pricing and licensing, as they are related to another functional role.

We evaluated McAfee.

it's up to them what they want to go for and what is the objective and scope they have.

Detection in real time, because it's really good.

• Machine Learning
• Reports
• Linux updates

I've used the solution for 15 years.

No.

No.

Excellent.

Straightforward.

Not applicable.

Yes, Kaspersky Enterprise.

Implementation and configuration with cloud services.

Confidence and stability are the most valuable features. For years, it has been top in this area.

It has been very useful against the day-to-day viruses and security threats.

The custom reporting and real-time monitoring (the customizable dashboard) need improvement.

I have used this solution for more than 10 years.

We have experienced a few stability issues in 10 years.

There were no scalability issues. I work in medium-sized organizations.

The few times that I contacted technical support, it was very good.

I was using McAfee. Ten years ago, the central administration was a lot better than Symantec.

The installation is really intuitive.

Symantec is a little more expensive, but it works!

Read the best practice guidelines so as to configure/tune up your environment nice and easy.

• Fast deployment, even for highly distributed companies with centralized IT management using a distributed architecture.
• Intuitive management GUI and very easy to learn.
• Excellent intrusion prevention features.

It has been a time saver for operational and reporting tasks related to key security controls.

SEP provided visibility on threats and security incidents.

SEP could improve on virus detection, specially on Zero-Day threats.

I have used this for five years.

We haven’t had stability issues. After finishing the product, customizing it worked as expected.

We have had no scalability issues at all. Actually, it is far more scalable than other similar products.

The technical support is acceptable.

We didn’t have a previous solution.

It was a very fast deployment using the client detection features and a transparent Active Directory integration.

We evaluated Trend Micro and Kaspersky.

I would advice choosing this product because it is very easy to deploy, has a performance host IPS and antivirus engine, and it provides a key source for security metrics.

I like the intrusion prevention and Sonar features. The features have always helped strengthen our client’s proactive protection shield. The detection rate is good. False positives are less, which makes it a "perfect zero-day vulnerability encounter."

As a service-centric company, we have advised Symantec endpoint solution to various clients. They have been satisfied with the quality Symantec offers. It is easy on maintenance, has brilliant support. What else would a business need? It has helped to protect the endpoint infra in an efficient manner.

As an Endpoint Security Expert, I have worked on multiple anti-virus solutions of different vendors. They are turning the table in market. There are many ways in which I see Symantec overshadowing the same in near future.

The deployment mechanism needs work. There are various vendors who have been coming up with endpoint agents as small as size of a delta definition.
There are various options and tweaking which can help save the administrators a lot of effort, such as:

• Multi-domain policy options for exceptions and global blocks
• Deploying intelligent updates remotely
• Deleting AV cache remotely
• More versatile dashboard with more custom add-ons to monitor infra.

I see Symantec as being late in releasing certified definitions for the same day while other vendors are lightning fast. I would like to see a GUP monitoring tool being supported.

We have been using this solution for six years.

The Symantec agent is bulky in comparison to various vendors. It creates stability issues. We need a supported utility to wipe clear Symantec for a fresh installation during troubleshooting.

Symantec Customer support is very good. Indeed, it is one of the best so far. The KB articles are good and helpful.

We have worked with Sophos, McAfee, and F-Secure. All have pros and cons. The console management and policy options are pretty sorted in Symantec, so it always has a upper hand over other products.

I find other vendors' console options pretty good. Remotely evoking agent and real time results were good. Symantec’s command status is holding it back from a swift administration.

We implemented it ourselves. I have already mentioned that we do need real time results on the console and a better deployment mechanism. We have to work with custom scripts for the removal of third-party software which makes it bit tricky.

I never dealt in purchases, so I have no input.

Go for it. Symantec is a promising vendor and indeed a market leader in various technologies.

• It is stable
• No maintenance is required after a successful installation phase
• It is more than a classic Anti-virus solution: both SONAR and IPS help to protect the system
• The application and device policies are great features to help administration

After the initial setup, you don’t have to worry about the AV clients. It simply works.

The management of the server is a bit complex. It takes time get used to it. When upgrading the software for clients, you have to link the upgrade package to every sub-folder, and there is no inheritance.

We have used this solution for three years.

I did not encounter any issues with stability.

I did not encounter any issues with scalability.

We needed help for one or two issues and the support team was good.

We used another product and we switched to SEP because of the costs.

The initial setup was straightforward. The ability of the package to uninstall the old AV was a big plus in my case.

I’d say SEP deserves the money.

We did not evaluable other options. Anti-virus is not something you can test in 3-4 days. The pros and cons take time to show up.

Before installation, take your time to plan how you will manage your environment. If you already have another AV, please first check if SEP can auto-uninstall the old AV.

• Server management
• Deployment
• Updates

It's made the work environment more secure, and reduced the number of malicious malware attacks.

Interaction with the product admin needs work. If Symantec could add a new feature which would allow the user to be nice every time the new definitions are/are not in place. Also, for machines which have connectivity problems and cannot download the new definitions for several days, I would suggest that they include them int one report and alert the system admin about them.

I've used it for four years.

There were no issues with the deployment.

There were issues, and they should ensure that the product updates automatically, especially in the DMZ.

There were no issues with the scalability.

Customer Service:

8/10

Technical Support:

6/10

It replaced System Center Endpoint Protection. I don't know why this was chosen, it was a corporate decision.

The initial set-up was clear, there were no issues.

We implemented it in-house.

We have better product management.

I am unaware of pricing.

When I joined my office, they were already using this product.

Ensure the connectivity between the server/agents.

Symantec Antivirus is a good anti-virus software. It has a very good scanning engine and it's user interface really looks awesome. Their live support is also very professional. There was this one time that I had an issue after an upgrade, and their tech support representative successfully resolved the issue through remote troubleshooting.Renewing subscriptions is also a breeze online or via a purchased upgrade subscription from a local shop in our city. The software came pre-installed on a laptop I bought for my dad, and installing a new key after purchasing an upgrade from a local store was just a breeze. Compared to other products like Microsoft Forefront or Kaspersky Anti-virus, Symantec Anti-virus has the better user-interface. You get a dashboard with a lot of information.

One problem that I have with any Symantec product is the heavy consumption on resources. Though they claim that they have made inroads on this issue, their newest products still suffer from the same flaw.The problem lies in the very awesome-looking dashboard interface of the management application. There is too much information which can overwhelm basic users. As an advanced user, it simply has too much information which I could not use anyway. There are some widgets that are technically useless and just contributes to the already huge resource use of the application. Microsoft Forefront and Kaspersky Anti-virus has simpler but very usable management interfaces.I would less likely recommend this product to users who only have average RAM and CPU power. It will just eat your computer's resources and there are other products out there that can do the same job and has a less cluttered management interface.

If you are a fan though of Norton before (I am) and would like to get it's latest incarnation, then this product is for loyal followers like you. Just make sure that your system can handle the extra resources required for this application.

・ Symantec Endpoint Protection provides state-of-the-art defense against all types of attacks and seamlessly integrates the essential antivirus security tools needed into a single, high performance agent with a single management console. • Symantec Endpoint Protection offers the following features: anti-virus, anti-spyware, firewall, intrusion prevention system, application control, device control, and proactive threat scanning. • As an optional feature, the Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager can be integrated with the Active Directory. The Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager can import the organizational unit and the account data and synchronize that data with the Active Directory automatically.

・ Windows only. Remote management requires IE. Client messages can be confusing. Learning how to configure can take time. ・ Some of the messages that clients receive are not easy to understand. Instead of saying that spy/virus ware is blocked, the client receives a confusing message about HTTP common name traffic detection. ・ During scans and attacks it slower downs the system, making it very difficult to work.

This is the most comprehensive centrally managed endpoint security solution for businesses. It includes a host-based intrusion protection system (HIPS), device control, anti-malware, a network IPS, and a software firewall. Client policy is almost infinitely tweak-able from a central console—practical for large enterprises but a bit of overkill for the average small business.

Symantec EndPoint Protection is a package of protection against different types of threats and vulnerabilities. It contains anti spyware and antivirus programs for Window and Linux. Complete solution for client server architecture. It provides great security for network threats.

It consumes high resources and sometimes slows down the processing. It takes too much time to complete a scan. It does not fix all types of Viruses and Trojans.

It is a powerful antivirus of both physical and virtual environments. It is one of the best antivirus packages.

I have used Symantec Endpoint Protection for 5 years. The guy who's job I replaced bought a 5 year contract. The management console is mostly useful. It shows monitoring and conditions of computers. Mostly eye candy.

Doesn't protect against viruses. I have spent a lot of time cleaning up computers from malware and viruses using other tools. I usually use Avira, Malwarebytes, and Combofix to fix issues SEP couldn't detect. It usually detected 5/10 viruses. The management console wasn't very powerful. Sometimes I would have to manually update computers because SEP would error out. SEP is mostly a virus in itself. It's detection engine uses so much processor and RAM, it's faster to uninstall it than use it as anti-virus.

Use this if you need to keep yourself busy by running around fixing viruses. Right now I am using a combination of Immunet and Vipre antivirus. Much cheaper and easier to use.