Symantec Endpoint Protection 12 Adds vShield Integration & Increases Security Effectiveness

PRESS RELEASE

In the 16 months since its initial release, Symantec Endpoint Protection 12 has been deployed on more than 8.5 million endpoints…Symantec’s fastest adoption of an enterprise security solution. Customers tell us they’re moving to it because migration is easy and because our Insight and SONAR technologies deliver powerful protection. Even recent unsponsored tests by Dennis Labs illustrate that Symantec Endpoint Protection offers the highest accuracy ratings in the industry for stopping malware. So, what next?

Today we’re delivering new features that expand the protection of virtual environments, increase security effectiveness, improve management and broaden platform support.

Symantec Endpoint Protection 12 now allows seamless protection for VMware environments through integration with VMware vShield Endpoint. By integrating with vShield Endpoint, Symantec Endpoint Protection 12 offloads antivirus and anti-malware agent processing to a dedicated secure virtual appliance which streamlines deployment and monitoring in VMware environments. Bottom line: Symantec Endpoint Protection 12 with VMware vShield Endpoint can improve consolidation ratios and prevent anti-virus storms. (Read more about some recent third-party tests in VDI.) With robust security and blazing performance, there’s nothing stopping organizations from increasing virtualization of business critical systems and accelerating moves into cloud computing.

VMware vShield Endpoint provides Symantec anti-malware protection with an additional layer of defense in-depth, agent-less and directly from VMware cloud infrastructure. This can improve the overall security posture and compliance for a growing number of virtual machines deployed without security agents, i.e. test and development and private cloud deployments.

“As virtualization and cloud computing play an increasingly important role for business IT, we see a growing need for security solutions designed to secure virtual infrastructure,” said Parag Patel, vice president, Global Strategic Alliances, VMware. “We collaborated closely with Symantec so that VMware vShield Endpoint and Symantec Endpoint Protection 12 will work together because our customers are seeking security solutions to embrace virtualizing business critical applications and to accelerate cloud adoption.”

In addition to increased virtualization support, we also made improvements to the SONAR technology (our behavioral engine) to improve our protection against zero-day threats. Previously, SONAR monitored approximately 400 behaviors, looking for out of the ordinary activity. We’ve increased that to almost 1400 behaviors. This enhanced technology provides better protection from rapidly mutating zero-day threats, infections from merely visiting a malicious site and targeted malware.

Symantec Endpoint Protection 12 is also now easier to deploy, manage and update. IT administrators can automatically remove existing security software, and then use client wizards to seamlessly deploy Symantec Endpoint Protection 12.

Finally, Symantec Endpoint Protection 12 has also added platform support for Windows 8, Windows Server 2012 and OS X Mountain Lion.

For additional perspective, read what Feris Rifai, Founder and CEO of Bay Dynamics, has to say about Symantec Endpoint Protection.

All Symantec Endpoint Protection customers that are current with their maintenance agreements are entitled to this upgrade free of charge. Upgrading is easy and is just like our maintenance upgrade. Just go to FileConnect, download the software, upgrade the Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager and start pushing out the updates to your endpoints.