Symantec Announces Intelligent Information Governance To Mitigate Risks And Free Information

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – Jan. 16, 2012– Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) today announced an intelligent information governance solution that allows organizations to bridge the gap between business, legal and IT, reduce their risks and costs, and empower employees to work freely in a connected world. In order to enable organizations to better protect their information, establish retention policies and streamline their eDiscovery process, Symantec announced its plans for increased integration between its leading storage and eDiscovery offerings. Additionally, Symantec announced that it has acquired LiveOffice, a privately-held cloud-based archiving leader, for a purchase price of approximately $115 million. The acquisition will extend Symantec’s intelligent information governance offering to the cloud, providing customers choice between on-premise, cloud or hybrid delivery of Symantec solutions. The Advantage of Intelligent Information Governance By implementing the proper controls for information retention and protection, organizations can confidently allow their employees to share information freely. This provides a critical edge in a world where corporate information is increasingly accessed from a wider variety of devices (including smartphones and tablets), shared via social media, and stored in the cloud. The organization’s ability to secure this information, while allowing employees the ability to access it virtually anywhere, improves employee productivity and reduces information risk.

Symantec’s intelligent information governance solutions provide organizations with the technology needed to reduce the risks related to eDiscovery and compliance, and allow them to consolidate previously discrete portions of IT operations. Symantec provides federated search and a common classification engine across critical data sources, bringing context and relevance to information so organizations can find what they need, when they need it, and appropriately enforce policies and controls. Additionally, the ability to centrally manage security, information retention and eDiscovery functions reduces operational expenses and training costs.

“The governance of information is increasingly important to businesses. Companies need to simultaneously control and liberate information, letting employees freely access the information they need for maximum productivity without resulting in compliance risks to the organization,” said Katey Wood, analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. “By bringing together on-premise and cloud-based security, archiving, classification and eDiscovery, Symantec provides a solution that can help organizations proactively classify, retain and discover information while reducing risk and avoiding costs.”

“What were once disparate issues—information management, eDiscovery, and data security—are rapidly coming together due to the explosion of electronically stored information and the on-premise and cloud-based technologies that deliver and disseminate it. Organizations are increasingly demanding that these issues be addressed in a unified way through information governance,” stated Brian Dye, vice president, Information Intelligence Group, Symantec Corp. “As a market leader for storage, eDiscovery and security, Symantec continues to enhance its offerings and deepen its commitment to provide the most comprehensive intelligent information governance solutions.”

New Enhanced Governance Functionality Adding an information archive is one of the simplest steps an organization can take to improve its information governance. With an archive, organizations can systematically index, classify and retain information and thus establish a proactive approach to eDiscovery. Today, Symantec announces its plans to strengthen the integration of its leading archiving and eDiscovery solutions.

Symantec’s Clearwell eDiscovery Platform is expected to have the only collector certified by Symantec to collect directly from Symantec Enterprise Vault. This can allow users to collect content at scale from Enterprise Vault in the same manner they collect from other data sources over the network using the collection management console, accelerating collections and avoiding archive performance degradation.

Additionally, by leveraging Enterprise Vault’s existing index and Data Classification Services tags, users can perform targeted collections by providing metadata and keyword filters, specifying collection criteria via a simple point-and-click interface. Symantec’s Clearwell eDiscovery Platform also is expected to be able to preserve archived information in Symantec Enterprise Vault in place, thereby reducing risk and streamlining the eDiscovery process.

Together, the announced integration of Enterprise Vault and Clearwell will enable organizations to reduce their eDiscovery costs from information management through production, reduce their risk by improving the defensibility and repeatability of their processes, and streamline their processes to meet legal and regulatory deadlines.

Symantec’s Continued Investment in Archiving Symantec continues to enhance its market leading archiving and eDiscovery offerings with the acquisition of LiveOffice, Symantec’s hosted archiving OEM partner for Enterprise Vault.cloud. This acquisition, completed on Jan. 13, 2012, further deepens the company’s commitment to provide the most comprehensive and innovative archiving, compliance and eDiscovery solutions delivered on-premise, in the cloud, or as a hybrid solution. With the addition of LiveOffice, Symantec will help organizations to store, manage, and discover an increasingly broad range of unstructured information including on-premise and cloud-based information sources such as email, instant message, social media and file sharing.

Through the existing integrations between LiveOffice and the recently acquired Clearwell eDiscovery Platform, customers can export information from LiveOffice to the Clearwell eDiscovery Platform where it is collected along with information from Enterprise Vault and other data sources for processing, analysis, early case assessment and review. This acquisition will continue to enable Symantec to provide customers deeper alignment between these industry leading archiving and eDiscovery software solutions.

This acquisition also provides an opportunity for tighter integration between archiving and Symantec.cloud’s email security and management capabilities. With LiveOffice, Symantec provides customers a complete cloud-based solution for messaging protection, including: anti-SPAM, security, continuity, archiving, compliance, and eDiscovery – all from one vendor. With LiveOffice’s cloud-based archiving, customers can confidently address the challenges of messaging protection for both on-premise and hosted email. With no hardware or software required, this solution frees up IT resources and provides users with rapid and secure access to email from their inbox, any supported web browser or hand held device.

Related • Solution Page: eDiscovery • Solution Page: Symantec Enterprise Vault • Solution Page: Symantec’s Clearwell eDiscovery Platform • Solution Page: Symantec.cloud • Symantec Acquires LiveOffice

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About Symantec Symantec is a global leader in providing security, storage and systems management solutions to help consumers and organizations secure and manage their information-driven world. Our software and services protect against more risks at more points, more completely and efficiently, enabling confidence wherever information is used or stored. More information is available at www.symantec.com or by connecting with Symantec at: go.symantec.com/socialmedia.