Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC)last week unveiled three new versions of its security and storage solutions, as well as a brand new offering for use in what the company’s calling, next-generation data centres.
Mathew Lodge, senior director of product marketing for Symantec’s compliance and security management group, explains the new updates, which include, Brightmail Gateway V8.0, Data Loss Prevention (DLP) V9.0 and Enterprise Vault V8.0, are a part of the company’s Information Risk Management (IRM) strategy. The strategy’s objective, he says, is to aid IT workers in how they store, secure, search and manage information and storage.
“Businesses risk not finding (their information) because everything is spread around,” Lodge said. “IRM is about protecting information anywhere, reducing information storage costs, and automating workflows through four main areas: blocking external attackers, blocking internal data loss, being able to retain it efficiently and lastly, being able to find it easily.”
With these new announcements, Lodge said the company’s Mail Security Series product family has also now been rebranded under the Symantec Brightmail Gateway name.
“We’ve standardized all of our products under this name to be consistent and to be clear around what product does what so the name reflects what the products do,” he said. “We’ll still have a transition period where our customers can order by the old or new names. But in the next few months, everything will be under the new name.”
Symantec Brightmail Gateway V8.0 provides users with inbound and outbound protection and control and also gives them the ability to administrate and manage their infrastructures, Lodge said. Other features of the solution also include faster message audits, which are achieved by more increased search speeds and better visibility.
Jennifer Ellard, senior product marketing manager of Vontu Data Loss Prevention at Symantec, said the DLP space can be classified based on three key trends. These include the increase of information and the data that’s out there, determining whether or not data’s confidential and being able to find it, and lastly, the risk of data loss which is caused when more and more employees work outside of the office.
Ellard says Version 9 of Symantec’s DLP solution allows end-users to define a data security policy using one management console, without having to rewrite them later. Also new in DLP V9.0 is the integration of Altiris, which is a service-oriented management software that allows organizations to better manage their IT assets.
“We’ve also introduced more advanced data discovery capabilities so we can now map files back to their owners,” Ellard adds.
The latest version Symantec’s Enterprise Vault e-mail, file and instant messaging archive solution that helps users adhere to e-discovery and compliance regulations, includes features such as search within a search, a guided review option, the ability to find information more quickly and advanced storage reduction capabilities.
“With Enterprise Vault, we’re heavily dependent on partners for architecture, design and implementation,” Lodge said. “Our partners help us bring reach to our customers.”
Veritas Cluster Server One (VCS1) is a new solution from Symantec that’s aimed specifically at next-generation data centres, Jason Nadeau, director of product management for Symantec’s Veritas Cluster server family, said. The current data centre market, he explains, is quickly moving from a static, monolithic approach, to a more flexible one that’s distributed with different applications, operating systems, virtualization platforms and severs.
“VCS is all about getting businesses back up and running on the disaster recover side in just seconds and minutes,” he said. “VCS1 doesn’t take a lot of heavy bandwidth and it’s built for a virtual machine that provides users with control and visibility.”
The goal with VCS1, Nadeau adds, is to be able to provide users with a multi-tier high availability (HA)/disaster recovery (DR) model solution that decreases downtime, in addition to lowering operational expenses by providing scalability.
“With VCS1, our channel partners have the potential to be able to move to a service offering with their customers as well,” Nadeau said. “It’s a consultative solution that lets partners achieve high margin deals that are in the double-digit range.”
The new updated solutions from Symantec are all now generally available, with the exception of the company’s DLP V9.0 solution, which executives say will be available sometime early during next year’s first quarter.