Why Symantec?

Most universities, companies, and coorporates I have encountered use Symantec Anti-virus corp. In addition, this seems to be true in the current market. Why so many are using Symantec? Is it the product support? Is it the price? Is it the marketing? Is it the product itself?

 

I have to use my imagination on this one. Could be Symantec was preinstalled and as you know it's hard to uninstall and uninstalling may lead to a format so they just renew it every year because time=money or maybe they're just stupid or maybe...anyone?

 

Well I will use my imagination and suggest it is because Symantec put out a quality product that the university IT people, not being stupid after all they DO work for university or research community, decide is good product to use.

 

I will agree, even with all of the Nav bashing by unknowledgable people Symantec continues to produce a very good antivirus product, corporate or home.

 

Regardless of any opinions of NAV as a product, I tend to think it's so widespread due to marketing, which includes bundling it in with systems. The businesses I've dealt with just use it because they already have it, or becuase it's such a big name (and they don't want to go with anything from an unknown company).

 

That must be me, among others, you're refering to. I think that when Norton av-home is an awful peace of software (which it is), it would be really strange that the corpversion would be the best in his league. If that's the case then all university IT people are indeed right on the money, my imagination left me hanging and I rest my case. However, when home and corp are of the same quality compared to the competition in their respective leagues then it's a different ballgame and you are unknowledgable. Btw I never really understood why saying a product isn't good, compared to others, is considered bashing. It's only bashing when it isn't true. When it's true it's called truth.

 

There are Antiviruses NOT named Symantec that are difficult to uninstall and leave junk behind. I for one have had Symantec products before and had no problems whatsoever. Not uninstalling, not live updating, not failing to catch viruses. Nothing.

 

The word stupid MIGHT be considered bashing. There are lots of ways to make a point. Some produce a lively friendly debate. Others produce anger. It's all in the telling.

 

When people responsible for securing a company choose bad securitysoftware I wouldn't call it wise. I, as everybody else I guess, would call it stupid. So when the symantec corp-av is bad, then choosing it is stupid. That's not bashing, that's using the right word for it. Ok, unknowledgable is maybe a more pleasant word for it, but I just learned it .

 

Get,

The step many people forget to include is..."this product is bad because...", because what?

Saying AV "X" is junk because it s#%ks is circular nonsense, but that's what most bashing consists of. Whereas stating that you choose to avoid AV "X" because of false positives, your impression of system responsiveness, compatibility with other programs, or whatever objective trait you choose to employ is fine.

You've made a decision and have explained the rationale. Some will agree with it, others won't, hopefully all will learn something from the exchange.

Blue

 

Personally I believe it is mostly marketing. They have been around for awhile and have become a "familiarity". I have asked several people why they used Norton antivirus and the most common responses were (to paraphrase), "it came installed on my PC" and "I had heard of it, so I bought it".

Sure, Symantec makes decent products, but my personal opinion is that they are not the best available. Brand names give many people a warm fuzzy, "I'm safe" feeling, and as long as they are happy with the product then so be it.

Fortunately there are other choices.

 

Reduce a lot the resources, fix the GUI problems, resolve the uninstall issues...
Just a few things that Symantec should do to have a real nice AV...

But if I have a lot of better options out there, why using a program like this!?
Not for me...

 

Since the discussion really focuses on Symantec Corporate, there are a few things to keep in mind:

• A corporation is going to stick with a decision for a few years and will not generally upgrade on every engine release. The issue with SAV/NAV uninstall performance is effectively moot.
• Centralized management, configuration, and administration is a critical characteristic. This alone can make or break a choice in a corporate environment. I assume Symantec handles this well. While we may love to tweak our AV's, that would give my corporate IT folks a stroke, and generally with good reason.
• A lot of the streaming updates that we all love really aren't germane to a corporate environment. Surfing should be low risk. Daily-weekly updates pushed at bootup to the domain are probably the norm.
• Site license terms - yea, it matters. It's a cost that must be paid, but you don't want to pay for functionality that will not be used.

In the corporate environment, key needs and desired traits are rather different.

Blue

 

These are IMO:

PROS/Why people use it:

1. It's an excellent product, with excellent detection. Businesses would have to be crazy to buy an inferior product--and would quickly dump it if it didn't work, so to argue otherwise is silly.
2. The SARC website is second to none.
3. Their cleaners/malware removal instructions are still pretty much the best and most comprehensive out there.
4. It's manageability in a large scale--while not the greatest, is still better than most AV's.
5. Symantec/Norton are synonymous with AV. Can't get around that. Your IT guys (including me) might know 25 different AV's that they prefer, but the CEO only knows Norton, and that's the one they're going to be more comfortable with purchasing.

CONS:

1. Price is less than competitive, and you can get more for your money with other solutions that cost less. (NOD32 for example )
2. Updating is clunky in a large environment.
3. Updates are unnecessarily large, and non-incremental pattern updates are antiquated.
4. The "once-a-week" update model that Symantec uses is outdated.
5. Heuristics are comparatively poor, resulting in sweating when a 0-day hits--at least for a few hours.

That being said, we've run SAV 8.0-->10.0 (so far) since 2002, and it has performed remarkably well on over 300 pc's for us--from P133's w/32MB RAM to P4's with 2.6Ghz processors and 512MB.

It still definitely belongs in the "big-boy" league, IMO.

 

As your co-worker, I agree

 

Ok, bashing is saying something sucks, but don't explain why. I didn't feel the urge to do so, because I allready now this so long. It's like saying the sky is blue and then have to explain why. But ok, for me norton av sucks because when I used it (for a long time) I had too many virusses whereby norton wasn't of any use. I have seen way too many pc's (also recent) with norton onboard with the same problem (virus onboard and norton taking a siesta) for it just to be a coincedence. Symantec software is known to slow down your pc (as it did mine) and I have seen a lot of instances of people asking on forums something along the line of "how the hell do i get this symantecstuff out of my pc without having to format??" (wasn't a problem for me). I didn't have an infected pc since using Nod32, slowing down..what do you mean? ...since using Nod32 and it uninstalls without a problem. So there you have the reason why I get a little aggitated when I read "quality software" or something like that in combination with "symantec". It just isn't true and is misleading to people who want just that on a forum...truth.

 

In YOUR experience.

It's just as true that SAV has worked fine for us for over 4 years here.

It's also true that every infected PC I've ever worked on that had Norton on it had either the RTM disabled, or an expired license with outdated defs.

YMMV.

 

It looks like the original question has been answered. So unless somebody has something new...

 

Fluctuations in the refractive index of the atmosphere due to the discrete nature of the gas molecule which scatters light of all wavelengths coupled to the inverse fourth order dependence of scattering efficiency on wavelength (shorter wavelength = more intense scattering) and the color sensitivity characterisitics of our eyes, that's why. You can learn something every day if you choose to.

Blue

 

@BlueZannetti: Of course I meant for me explaining why norton sucks is like explaining why the sky is blue and therefor I didn't feel the urge. It was just an explanation for why I didn't explain it, not a justification. @JimIT: I know there are people satisfied with Norton, but my experience as wel as SOME other people I know who have used it and many many posts in forums tell a different story and for me that's no coincendence or a matter of all these people misconfiguring their pc's, but hey it's a possibility because the "many many people" I, of course, don't know enough to tell with certainty, so therefor I will say Norton MAY suck, but it's not proven 100%, although for me personally it's proven beyond a reasonable doubt, because the percentage of people with Norton misconfiguring it would have to be MUCH higher than people with many other av's misconfiguring it. The difference can't be explained by the fact that Norton is a bestseller in my opinion.

 

I had been reselling/supporting/installing Syms CE/SBE for many many years. Marketing certainly got the name well known out there, plus availability through the many reseller channels is key. Also they contribute heavily at Techsoup, making it available at slashed prices for non-profit organizations. It is a good product, IMO far superior to their retail home user product. I stopped reselling it over a year ago due to reasons based on rising price, difficult licensing, and the heaviness of version 10...but up until then, I did like the product.

 

I've never seen Corporate Edition (the product he's talking about) pre-installed on any computers.

 

Get,

I realize that, but with all the noise that generally permeates these discussions, if you have a firm reason for your choices - even something as seemingly trivial as I don't like the interface - it provides someone following the discussion food for thought in considering their own selections.

Blue

 

I agree of course.