Symantec Endpoint Security Reviews

It is used for detecting and blocking web attacks. 

It has helped me in providing authentication mechanisms, restricting devices, and blocking global threats. There is about 10% to 15% improvement.

All Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP) features, such as anti-malware, zero-day attack protection, and IPS features, are valuable.

Zero-day threat and device management or device control can be better. The patch implementation or patch management can also be better because sometimes, they are issuing or deploying patches in old versions.

It should support the next-generation IPS. Currently, it supports only IPS.

I have been using this solution since 2010.

We haven't had any issues with SEP. We have been using it for quite a long time, and it has been stable. It is reliable. We are getting upgrade patches. 

We are also using other Symantec solutions, such as Blue Coat, and we have had issues with them but not with SEP.

It can be scaled up with EDR and XDR extensions. We have deployed it at multiple locations, and we have plans to increase its usage.

Their technical support is fine. I didn't find any issues with that. I would rate them a nine out of ten.

Positive

I used to use Trend Micro Quick Scan. I switched because we were getting some attacks, and Trend Micro was not able to detect them.

It was straightforward. We had around 500 systems, and it took about a week. About three to four people were involved in its deployment. Their roles were engineer, team lead, and admin.

We had a consultant from Symantec for its implementation. In terms of maintenance, it doesn’t require that much maintenance, but it requires patch updates on a regular basis. I take care of its maintenance.

The pricing is as per the environment. If all the features are there, there will be a cost for them. There were no additional costs for me. Support and other things were included in the pricing.

We did a PoC of McAfee, Trend Micro, and other solutions in our environment. Symantec was better. So, we went for it.

I would advise using all of its features, such as IPS. These features are very good. I'm using a lot of solutions from Symantec. I am using SEP, and I am also using Blue Coat devices. They provided us with the entire solution design.

I would rate Symantec Endpoint Security a nine out of ten. It is a nice product.

We use it to secure our endpoint, especially with employees working from home.

Our company provides amusement park guest hospitality. This solution helps us with our daily operations, managing the amount of traffic in the network coming from the Internet as well as application updates and passwords. 

It lets us control users and their actions when browsing.

Every month, we do an analysis. This allows our systems to be the most effective with all the changes that need to be done. It gives us a dashboard where we can view four or five key components, like malware protection, exploit protection, network intrusion, behavior analysis, and additions to the firewall. We also do daily, weekly, or monthly analyses based on events. This helps us have a clearer picture of our organization, what is wrong with a security event, and where you need to really focus to prioritize events. For example, if you have a network intrusion on the firewall, this gives a detailed view of your network where you can focus on the right solution, and prioritizing events.

We are using the solution to mitigate security breaches. We are constantly monitoring the endpoint interface dashboard. If there is a breach, it gets isolated. We see those on the report and event logs. We then apply the Application Control feature to take remedial actions.

If there is exposure, we need to investigate the source of the attack, e.g., whether it came from the network or externally. We view the firewall logs, and if there has been exposure, then we use the Application Isolation feature. When there is an attack with on-prem, that system will go into isolation mode, removing connectivity to other internal systems. We also restrict the WLAN part to avoid that system broadcasting to other networks.

It gives us a big picture of our response and remediation processes with one product, which is very good.

The detection and response are quite good. We have a few templated policies that we have created for our entire organization. We have added groups to ensure that if an attack or breach happens, then it can be isolated from our network.

We use Application Control, Application Isolation, Web Traffic Redirection (WTR), and Network Integrity. These ensure that traffic is flowing. 

The device can be outdated. More enhancement of network and discovery would help already great features.

The company has been using it for almost five years.

We haven't had any issues when updating it.

The scalability meets our company's requirements of on-prem and cloud. Therefore, I would rate its scalability as nine out of 10.

We have not yet used the Threat Hunter Team.

I would rate the technical support as nine out of 10. Most things are resolved within a day. Some things have taken a week because they needed to assess the system and what went wrong. Critical assessment of root causes takes about two to three days.

Positive

We have around four to five applications. For example, we are using Oracle Fusion Middleware and ERP in-house for our operations. 

We have also used Sophos, where it took a little time to put policies in place. It is quite complicated and not that user-friendly. We had a bad experience with them.

Symantec Endpoint Security is better because it has other features, like Application Control and Application Isolation, that can be utilized. It gives us complete control of the endpoint, so we can customize our workflow to control security.

We have used Symantec Professional Services for updates and helping to get services properly installed.

Protecting the company data is key. This solution gives a clearer picture of your endpoint, security, and network. These three things are very important for us, which is why using Symantec Endpoint Security is a win-win for us. 

Our detection and response times are very high. Whenever something happens, such as an attack, we are immediately prioritizing it via the dashboard. 

When we go for a product review, we normally do a PoC to understand how the application will scale our innovation before adding it into our pipeline. 

Other solutions have the detection and response feature.

We are currently doing an assessment for VPN parameters, making it more secure. We are checking out that enhancement right now.

We have not integrated our Active Directory (AD) with this solution. We are still evaluating this. Our AD is currently not centralized. Once it is centralized, we will connect it to Endpoint Security.

We do a PoC whenever a new feature is released. They provide training, which helps us to be on the same page.

I would rate them as 10 out of 10.

The main use case is to scan vulnerabilities on our endpoints. We need to make sure that our antivirus software is up to date. We need to ensure that patches on our workstations are up to date and that we can scan through folders and files to detect malware.

It's very good. Most of the clients are using this solution. It's able to protect workstations from threats, malicious files, and malicious USB drives. It's able to protect business-related files on the workstations. If you have an environment where you need to protect critical files from threats, it's a good solution.

It also defends us against the latest sophisticated attacks, such as key-finding attacks and spyware. It provides protection against threats, spyware, ransomware, malware, etc. It's pretty good at that.

It provides a single pane of glass. You can see everything through the dashboard. It's pretty good.

It has improved our security posture. It protects us from attacks outside, and it protects our files. It also prevents the corruption of files and secures our critical business-related files.

Symantec Endpoint Security is easy to use, fast, and good for small and medium-sized businesses.

Unlike other AV products, such as Norton, Symantec Endpoint Security doesn't use many system resources.

Its GUI needs improvement. It's good, but it needs to be improved in terms of management and reporting. Its reporting features aren't straightforward.

We've been using the solution for around five years. 

It's stable.

It's scalable. One of the clients has 50 users and another one has 10 users. It's good and pretty fast. It's being used at multiple locations.

It's very easy to increase the number of endpoints. You just need to purchase more licenses. If you have more users, you need more licenses.

We have plans to increase its usage.

I'd rate them an eight out of ten. We had to raise an issue only once, and it was resolved within hours.

Positive

We have other endpoint security solutions. We bid for many companies. We check what the client wants to achieve, and we also take the price into consideration

Generally, Symantec can provide all the features that our clients commonly require. Its price is also good compared to other solutions such as Cisco AMP. Cisco AMP is very expensive. We only deploy it at the airports.

We have different test cases to show how effective it's against different types of malware, corrupt files, malicious files, etc. It works pretty well. We are happy with it. It's able to detect and stop all types of malware. We also tested it to see how it treats benign files, and it works pretty well.

It's simple to install. Its deployment is easy. It takes two to five hours. You need an antivirus server. You can directly download the antivirus client on your PC from there and then you just click next, next, and next to install it. 

We have seen an ROI. Based on the service that you get in return, it's definitely worth the money. 

It's pretty awesome price-wise. That's why we give it to most of our clients. It isn't very expensive.

Compared to Cisco AMP, which is very expensive, its price is okay. It's also cheaper than Malwarebytes.

The license that you purchase lasts a period of time. After that, you again need to purchase another license. Otherwise, you will not be able to get support from Symantec every time you have issues.

I've not used it on mobile devices, but on workstations, it's awesome. You don't require any other antivirus solution. It's simple to install. It works very well in the Windows environment. You don't need to install anything else. It provides any type of endpoint security, including USB protection.

If you have a critical network environment and security is very important to you, you can consider this solution. It can offer you the level of security that you need. It can provide what you are looking for in terms of endpoint protection.

It's very good for a small or medium organization. If you have a very large environment, you can consider other alternatives, but for small environments with 50 users, it works very well. For bigger environments, such as airports, we use Cisco AMP.

It hasn't as such saved time when responding to issues. Sometimes we have issues where the user isn't able to use the system until we resolve the issue. We have had cases where the issue got resolved immediately, but sometimes, we have had issues that required opening a case with them or intervention from the administrator.

Overall, I'd rate this solution an eight out of ten. 

The solution's application control feature is very, very powerful. The solution will automatically check the host integrity and quarantine if something is not compliant.

Users mostly complain that the solution slows down the system whenever something is scanned. Sometimes, Symantec gets blocked with legitimate applications, and we add the application in the exceptions. Users always complain that agents, which are very heavy for the system, slow down the PC's performance.

I have been using Symantec Endpoint Security for seven years.

Around 1,300 to 1,400 users were using the solution in my previous organization.

I am happy with the solution's technical support team.

The solution’s initial setup is easy.

We started with a very old version and eventually upgraded to RU6. Since we had some Windows 7 clients in our organization, we couldn't upgrade to the next versions, RU7 and RU8, because Windows 7 support is not available in those versions. Meanwhile, we started working on upgrading some systems which have specific applications running on them.

My previous organization compared different products and decided to use Symantec Endpoint Security because it was very good back then. Symantec was the first one to highlight the 2021 cyber threat. Back then, not many people were familiar with the concept of EDR.

After comparing different products, we decided to go with Symantec Endpoint Security because our major concern was application control. We didn't want any user to come, use a USB to copy the data, and leave the organization. Since users don't give us time to upgrade the system, we put the host integrity. If a service pack is not installed on the system, the system will get quarantined.

Overall, I rate Symantec Endpoint Security an eight out of ten.

We use the solution for our endpoint security. It's our compliance requirement to prevent virus attacks and ransomware attacks. However, it's unmanaged and not like a top competitor to CrowdStrike.

The solution's reporting could be improved. The solution could have better integration with other services.

I have been using Symantec Endpoint Security for one and a half years.

I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.

More than 5,000 users were using the solution in our organization.

We were using the signature deployment, which is not easy.

Symantec Endpoint Security is an expensive solution.

Given the number of alerts and the variety of attacks we get, we will require AI capabilities for threat detection. Around six to seven members were involved with the solution's deployment and maintenance. I wouldn't recommend the solution to other users unless it is updated.

Overall, I rate the solution a five out of ten.

The primary use cases of this solution are for antivirus protection, anti-malware protection, and personal firewall protection.

The most valuable feature is the automated updating. They send out updates on a regular basis. All that we have to do is to set it up on our server to download it, then it is distributed to the individual endpoints. 

Individual machines could do the same thing but it would only be on that one machine.

It seems to block things fairly well.

This solution is resource-heavy. It uses up a lot of memory and a lot of disk space. It demands a lot of resources. There have been improvements with Windows 10 and it's not as problematic.

The firewall capabilities did not seem to do what the documentation claimed it should do.

Port control is one of the things that this solution does do, but it does it on a higher level. When I say port control, it's things like USB ports that can be used to plug things in. For example, if you plug in a wired mouse or a wireless mouse then you want the flexibility to be able to do that. It should be able to identify that it is a mouse and let you use it. 

By the same token, if you plug in a 1 TB external hard drive, that should be shut down unless it is one of your hard drives. The only way to detect that would be to have units with their own serial number and the system programmed in such a way that it would recognize it.

Seagate for example has many external drives. They have serial numbers on those drives, and we don't want to just set it up for use by any Seagate drive. We want our external drives to be used, only. We don't want to have to go purchase Seagate drives to have it work. We want them to get it from us, that we know works, and have them return it to us.

I would like to see a check-in system where you can log which specific drives your staff can access and what they cannot access.

I have been using this solution for approximately six to eight years.

With Windows 7 there were some stability issues. The environment handled resources differently. You could have a fairly resource-heavy solution that would make the system unusable.

Windows 10 improved stability quite a bit.

Technical support is good, but when they sold to Broadcom, even though people were paying for the support they were not getting it.

This product is more reasonably priced than some competing solutions.

We spoke with some vendors who recommended Sophos and Crowdstrike. While Crowdstrike has some incredible features, it's four times the cost.

Sophos is supposed to handle our needs.

Crowdstrike could handle our needs and then some, but we couldn't justify the cost.

Within the last three or four months, we decided to drop Symantec on its own because of some issues we have with the company. We will be using Sophos.

Symantec sold off their enterprise solutions, which this product falls into. When they sold it. they sold it to a company that has purchased software packages in the past and not done very well with it. They are a hardware company trying to expand into the software realm. This is another example of a hardware company that thinks that they can do software and they can't.

We were told that Broadcom was ignoring all of their customers that were below a certain level of license purchases. Some of the customers were calling wanting to renew their product and they were having to wait a month or six weeks just to get a quote.

We did our own research and confirmed that what we were told was true and decided that we were not going to renew and went to Sophos.

If you are going with Symantec, definitely purchase the 24/7 tech support. They will help you with just about everything, or at least they used to. I am not sure if that still applies to Broadcom.

They now offer the option to put it into the cloud for the management capabilities. That way the endpoints, the individual laptops, and desktop computers are actually going to a website to get the management, the new definitions, and new configurations. This option should seriously be considered. 

I am not recommending that they do that but they should at least seriously consider it, because, while having that one server to do that one thing is fairly important, it would be nice to not have to deal with it.

For what we were using this product for it was pretty good, but there were some things that we didn't like, and some things that we would have like to take advantage of.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use it for endpoint protection for desktops and server computers.

Some of the administrative features are very good. I like the way it allows you to automate things when you're using it with Active Directory. 

I like the additional features that come with it. The firewall feature and the encryption feature that they throw in are good as well. Another thing that I like about Symantec is that it runs on different platforms, not just on Windows.

Getting it up and running can be a bit overcomplicated. 

Symantec isn't good in terms of updating customers about updates. You'd normally have to search it out. Sometimes, the update process for the administration and management console can be a bit intimidating, and it can be quite inconvenient to get the updates. That's because when you have to do the update, you have to update the management console, and then you need to update the clients. Their application that's installed on desktops and servers needs to go hand in hand with the management console. Sometimes, it's a bit unwieldy to see that process through. 

The ransomware protection on Symantec doesn't match its competitors at the moment. Defender is doing a better job in terms of ransomware protection.

Their support can be improved. It's difficult to know who to call, and their online knowledge base is quite difficult to navigate.

I have been using this solution for about 14 years.

Its stability is excellent. It is very stable.

It is very scalable. This is one of the things I like about it.

Their support isn't always very easy. It is difficult to know who to call. 

The online knowledge base is quite difficult to navigate because they seem to have so many products, and there are so many different versions of all of those products. It is hard to find an article that relates to the problem you are trying to solve.

It could be a bit overcomplicated to get it up and running.

Its updates are also not easy. We only have a small team. Usually, wherever I've worked, the IT team is pretty small and you don't normally have an engineer who is dedicated to Symantec. They do various other jobs, and they look at the application infrequently. So, when a major task comes along, because of the complexity, it is sometimes quite difficult for them to achieve what they need to do. It takes them a little while to do it because they have to re-learn the application and find the correct article in the knowledge base for the right version. The instructions can sometimes be quite complicated.

I am not sure of the initial cost, but the yearly renewals are quite affordable, which is a good thing. The price seems to have come down in recent years, and with the alternatives that are out there, such as Microsoft Defender, it needs to maintain that affordability to make it attractive.

It seems to be a fairly robust antivirus tool. It doesn't catch all viruses and protect you from everything, but it seems to protect you from a good number of variations of viruses and malware. It doesn't catch all malware, but it does catch quite a lot. Microsoft Defender is better at detecting malware at the moment. Microsoft Defender is doing a really good job in terms of matching and probably even beating Symantec in terms of malware and ransomware protection.

A lot of people who are using Windows normally use Microsoft Defender, but I normally use Symantec on Windows Desktops. Symantec runs on different platforms. It is not just for Windows.

I would rate it a seven out of 10.

We are a solution provider for end customers like Telco, banks, etc. We are also a Symantec partner and reseller. Not only do we use it but we also position this solution for customers.

We have a telecom company that was using Kaspersky and they still had some vulnerabilities and attacks and we discussed with them and succeeded in presenting this solution. The one we proposed was Symantec Protection Suite, SPS Enterprise Edition, for about more 1,100 endpoints, exactly 1,100 users. We also implemented the mailer for Symantec Messaging Gateway for spam protection. Until now they used the solution and they are very satisfied with it. We started with SEP 12.1 but later they upgraded to SEP 14.

We had a bank that we were working with and they had a challenge in which they needed to protect against vulnerability. They had previously used Kaspersky, we discussed and told them that Symantec is capable and is able to address their specific challenges. We gave them a trial version. When they started they found it very easy; not easy to implement but easy to use. We started with the headquarters here and later we also implemented it for all the subsidiaries in the region, in other countries. They have a centralized solution, so they can help other countries in management. 

We had to position Symantec in big companies like Telco and several banks. With this solution, you also get the Protection Suite, endpoint protection, SEP, and you also have the Mail Security and Messaging Gateway. It's really integrative and our customers find it very valuable. It addresses almost all of the challenges on security for endpoint messaging. Symantec is going to be used much more because of its features.

The mobility solution should be improved. You need to separately purchase mobile, like a smartphone with Android and so on, you need to buy it separately with SAP, for example. It would be better for the user to use the same solution with all devices, even laptops, desktops, server and so on. They should also use the same endpoints for mobile devices. 

There are a few negative points. They should separate the feature for each separate solution for mobile devices. The second one is about the price, it's expensive. Finally, the third would be the complexity of implementation.

It is very stable. Even the customers don't really complain compared to other solutions. 

It is very scalable.  

Their technical support is reactive. When you have an issue, you just log a service request and you can find an engineer to help you. I would rate their technical support a nine out of ten. We're very confident that whenever we have an issue we can find the solution. It also depends on the support you choose. We have 24-hour support.

We also use McAfee because of the scalability. It had the issue that it consumed too many resources and for vulnerabilities, sometimes there are some direct varieties you cannot delete.

The initial setup is a little bit complex. You need to have a certain level of training before being able to set up it. What is nice is that you can remotely install the set up on all of the infrastructures from the server, the SAPM, that is the Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager, you can manage all the endpoints but it's not really easy to set up or to configure the policies. Sometimes customers find it a little bit difficult to implement for the configuration because you need some knowledge to implement the feature.

The setup depends on the issues of the network. The bottom line is if the network is really mastered, the policies on the network are really mastered in around three to four days for the new companies.

We only need one person who is well trained to manage and support this solution. 

It's not planned yet to switch to another product but we can potentially implement Cisco as we are also a Cisco partner and we find it sometime interesting when requested by the customer. But we push and we recommend Symantec.

This solution is very effective. It can really address the challenges but you need to have training in order to be able to effectively implement it. If you don't fully know how to implement it you can't use the features very usefully.

I would rate it a nine out of ten because of its ability to address challenges and because of the completeness of the solution.