Symantec Endpoint Security Reviews

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.

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.

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.

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.

We use it for endpoint security.

We no longer have to deal with day-to-day threats, and we can focus more on work. Whenever there are some problems, our operations don't stop. So, we can continue our work knowing that there is a good security solution protecting us.

Its ease of use in deploying it and regular updates are most valuable.

It can be improved in terms of features and integration. It should have more advanced features and more integration. Currently, it is just talking to their own solutions. They could add more artificial intelligence, more XDR, and more integration with other vendors so that we can do sharing of information with other vendors.

I have been using this solution for more than five years.

It is not stable in terms of the company. They have already been bought many times. A lot of people are changing brands because of the acquisition of Broadcom. So, it is not much stable.

They are the best. There is no problem in regards to response time. You can easily get technical support.

Its initial setup was straightforward.

They're on the reasonable side. They are at mid-level. They're not too expensive as compared to their competitors. They're also not too cheap. In terms of price structure, hopefully, they could do a subscription.

If you are looking for regular endpoint security, you can count on Symantec, but if you're looking for more advanced security or have advanced requirements, or if you have a big company that has different security products in place, you might as well look for another one. I could suggest Symantec if your security appetite is not that big.

I would rate Symantec End-User Endpoint Security a seven out of ten.

On-premises

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.

The primary use of this solution is for security.

I have found the central control console the most valuable feature.

There is room for improvement in the zero-day threat detection system.

In the next release of this solution, the email integration could improve.

I have been using this solution for approximately five years.

When comparing this solution to others in the current market it is expensive.

I rate Symantec End-User Endpoint Security a four out of ten.