Symantec Endpoint Security Reviews

Symantec provides an anti-malware solution for our infrastructure, including a host firewall, behavioral analysis, and intrusion prevention. It's an essential compliance component of an enterprise.

We have domestic and offshore branch offices, data centers, and headquarters. We initially deployed it to 2,500 workstations and eventually expanded to 3,500.

Symantec detects malicious software in our environment and provides intrusion prevention. We see the benefits immediately after deployment. Our whole platform benefited from Endpoint Security.

Symantec's detection capabilities are strong. It involves run protection and behavioral analysis.

We had an issue with the Broadcom migration. We had some problems with product support, and the deployment is tricky because it's an on-premises technology. Deploying any on-premises security solution is hard because you have to distribute the software. 

There are also some issues with false positives and minor product issues in terms of usability. It comes back to the support team. If we have product issues, then it should be relatively easy for them to resolve the matter. 

We started using Symantec in 2015 or early 2016. We still use the solution, but we plan to decommission it by the year's end.

Symantec is relatively stable, but it's an on-premises solution, so we need to spend more time on version upgrades and patches. We have encountered some major bugs, which cause DSOD on all our machines during updates.

We haven't tried scaling up because we maintain a stable number of users, but it's fairly easy to add some users to Symantec. It's just like migration.

I rate Symantec support six out of ten. They need more specialized support engineers with advanced knowledge of Endpoint Security. We have several people with experience using the product, so we know the basics already. Also, the resolution speed isn't acceptable.

Neutral

We used McAfee VirusScan Enterprise in the past. We transferred to Symantec primarily because our team has prior experience with Symantec. We also considered its Gartner rating. I believe Symantec is in the first or second spot in the endpoint protection category.

We did the deployment and testing ourselves. The deployment wasn't as easy as we would like. The environment and network are complex. That's why we need to consider different types of deployment. We use our software configuration management and also some standalone solutions. We sometimes use DMZ for manual installation. Those were the pain points of the deployment. It's not one source of deployment that we use differently.

It took around three months to completely deploy Symantec and replace McAfee.
Our deployment team was a combination of IT and security operations. A few asset owners were included, as well. After deployment, maintenance is minimal. 

I don't have any data on ROI, but we get what we need. From the moment we deployed Symantec, we haven't had any incidents coming from an endpoint.

I was not involved in the negotiations, but I believe the price was within the range we expect for endpoint protection.

We also considered Trend Micro and Carbon Black. Symantec's sales team won by lowering the price and adding some features in the package like web security services and Symantec EDR.

I rate Symantec Endpoint Security seven out of ten. I would recommend this product for securing endpoints. Hopefully, their support will improve. 

We haven't had problems with the product recently.

The solution does the job.

It seems to be user-friendly. Our users seem to like it for the most part. 

Every time an OS comes out, I have to upgrade the Symantec product. They don't know how to patch it. If they would produce a patch instead of uninstalling or installing over the current version and rebooting I'd be a lot happier with the product. 

As far as what it attacks and how good it is and its job I don't really care. It drives me nuts because every time I have to do a feature update it requires a new version of SAP. Then, I have to go through the silly process of putting it into the configuration manager, running tests and upgrading it, and making customers reboot their machines. It should make a pass and be done with it.

We've had Symantec for many years. It's likely been 10 plus years.

We haven't been too happy with technical support, We'd like them to be more helpful and responsive. 

We deploy the solution ourselves. 

I don't have any insights into the pricing or licensing aspects of the product.

We were looking at Microsoft Defender Antivirus due to the fact that we were looking at switching away from Symantec.

We're a customer and an end-user.

I'm a client guy, I'm not the security team that inspects the end product. My team deploys it and we have a configuration manager that makes sure it's deployed correctly. We have staging processes around Windows 10 and policies, et cetera, however, as far as inspecting it, that's not up to us. It's not our mandate. It's the security team that makes the decisions about the products we use. 

While our current version is on-prem, everything's going to the cloud. If we stay with it, maybe that is something we're looking at, however, we have a lot of different security products on our machine and we have applications that our customers use. Hopefully, they're going to decide to get something that combines the five or six other apps that we have that are doing various things beyond slowing our machine down.

I'm not sure if we are on the latest version of the solution. 

My main issue with the product is that I just can't stand the way they force you to upgrade the product instead of putting a simple patch on it.

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten.

We use Symantec Endpoint Security as an antivirus solution to protect our servers.

The product has valuable features for insights.

There could be definition updates installed and running for the product, similar to new EDR solutions that receive updates from the internet. We still have legacy concepts where clients have installed definitions themselves. It could be more effective. Additionally, the memory usage by the product could be reduced.

We have been using Symantec Endpoint Security for ten years.

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

We have 13000 Symantec Endpoint Security users in our organization. I rate its scalability an eight out of ten.

The technical support team’s response time is slow.

The initial setup process is easy.

I rate the product's pricing a six out of ten.

I rate Symantec Endpoint Security a seven out of ten.

We have Windows Endpoints and Linux Endpoints, but I believe it is mostly deployed on Windows. We do not have it installed on Linux.

We don't think the features are very valuable because they have limitations.

There are limitations because everyone these days has hybrid working; however, the endpoint does not work for us unless we are connected to a VPN, which is a major limitation. And because it's quite old technology that hasn't been updated, we don't want an on-premises solution; we want a cloud-based solution. We want a cloud-based solution and a market leader.

When I look at the Gartner Quadrant and the Magic Quadrant, it's nowhere near, if not lagging behind. For those reasons, I would not use it.

It was a good product many years ago, but since Broadcom took it over and so on, it has fallen behind.

I have been using Symantec End-User Endpoint Security for over five years.

I don't recall the version, but we are not working with the most recent version.

It's an older version. We are not looking to carry on using Symantec End-User Endpoint Security. We want one of the market leaders, and Symantec is in no way near being the market leader.

It's stable, but this could be due to our surroundings. There is only enough storage to store it. And I believe it is due to us, rather than the product, that we only store a limited amount of data.

Symantec End-User Endpoint Security is scalable.

We have very few people in our company who use this solution because we currently outsource our security operations to Symantec. There will only be three or four people that will be working with this product.

It's used every day, at some point.

I have not personally contacted technical support, but my security team may have.

Broadcom is concentrating on its top 200 customers. I don't think my team is overly impressed with the support they have been getting.

The support needs improvement.

Previously, we had not used any other Endpoint protection products.

I don't remember the installation process because it's been five years since it was done.

I'm sure it will require some endpoint updates.

Because we are still awaiting pricing, I am not sure what the difference is. I have only done the technical comparison; I haven't done the pricing comparison yet.

We are looking at CrowdStrike and Microsoft Defender.

Because we're not in the Top 200 in Symantec, we don't get the traction and escalations, but more importantly, if I look at the market leaders, it's very much Microsoft or CrowdStrike, and Broadcom Symantec is nowhere near the leading endpoint security in Gartner.

We want one that is multi-platform so that we can receive consistent and comprehensive reporting and alerts across all platforms. We're looking for a SaaS-based solution, which means it's all cloud-based and has advanced threat protection, including machine learning for zero-day attacks, as well as the ability to detect vulnerabilities and misconfigurations in real-time. One that's able to do memory scanning for malicious code threat hunting.

I couldn't recommend this solution; instead, I'm going for the market leader, which, is CrowdStrike, followed by Microsoft.

Based on the experience of my colleagues, and not as much my own, I would rate Symantec End-User Endpoint Security a six 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 used Symantec End-User Endpoint Security for a thin client for our servers and the full package for the user's systems.

Some of the most valuable features were antivirus, malware, and spyware. They were really good.

We had trouble with the advanced features, such as the firewall builder and all the network protection modules. We were having a lot of issues because it would sometimes block users or the printing, or it would create issues with the network access resources.

We were using the on-premise version of Symantec End-User Endpoint Security and one of the reasons to use the on-premise versions was to save the network traffic from the cloud. However, because we deployed the full package, the client's computers were really slow most of the time. End-user used to complain that their computers are running slow. It was not only the antivirus because the user had to run other applications as well, in parallel. As soon as we removed Symantec End-User Endpoint Security, the user did see a lot of improvement in their hardware performance, such as the CPU usage being lower and memory resources going down. 

The background scanning performance should be improved because it makes the computers run slow and we had the latest hardware, but it was still having issues. Their engine needs to be improved for the scanning.

I have been using Symantec End-User Endpoint Security for 10 years.

The solution is stable.

We had more than 10 users using this solution in my organization.

The installation is straightforward. The full deployment took approximately two weeks.

We did the implementation of Symantec End-User Endpoint Security ourselves.

We have one person that supports this solution.

We are phasing out the use of Symantec End-User Endpoint Security in my company and we only have a small number of systems using it at this time.

We plan to switch to Cisco Secure Endpoint.

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

Our primary use case of this product is endpoint security. We use it to secure our environment and endpoints—the basic purpose of antivirus products. 

This solution is deployed on-premises. 

One of the most valuable features is its antivirus database, which is current and updated daily. Another valuable feature is its capacity to be managed by a single server. The solution is managed by a secure server, so all the endpoints are managed from a central point. 

For me, Symantec has been working fine. I'm not dealing with security inside the company, I'm just in the network part, so I can't think of any suggestions for improvement. 

As for some features I would like to see, I'd like a retrospective action feature similar to Cisco Secure Endpoint's. Some antiviruses don't allow you to re-scan a product that was in the former scan—for example, if a file was classified as proper, but then for some reason the file was changed, we need an antivirus with retrospective capability. We need EPP and EDR products in a secured environment. 

We have been using this product for more than 10 years. 

This product is stable. We've been using it for 10 years, and I can say that it has been stable. 

Basically, once the product is installed on the server, there is no maintenance to do. Maybe there are some updates, moving from a lower to a higher version, but this is the main maintenance that people do. 

This product is easy to scale. Normally, such a product isn't easy to scale nor to manage, but this solution is user-friendly and isn't complicated to manage. In my company, this product is deployed on all the workstations—more than 1,700 PCs.

I'm not dealing with this product on the front line—it's managed by my colleagues on the security team—but I think Symantec's technical support is fine. If we ever have an issue, I think we raise a ticket to Symantec's support center, and they take care of us. 

Deploying Symantec is easy—when you install it, you click "next," "next," "next," and then you update the antivirus. When you start, it's already directly in production. For me, the initial setup was not a big deal. We deployed this solution internally. 

We implemented this solution through an in-house team. 

We are currently testing Cisco Secure Endpoint for endpoint protection, and we have been using it for one year. I prefer it because Cisco is one of the big network and security vendors, so when they sell a product, they're sure about the whole performance of the product. The product must have a good reputation because the brand itself says something. 

I rate Symantec End User Endpoint Security an eight out of ten, and would recommend it to others. 

We are using it for endpoint security and EDR and as an antivirus. We are also using it for threat detection purposes.

It is on-prem. We didn't migrate to the cloud.

The features are very nice. We are getting updates continuously from the Symantec side regarding any attacks, such as zero-day attacks. Symantec helps us in mitigating any attacks or threats early. 

Whenever we have any issues regarding the endpoints, Symantec is very helpful in resolving those issues.

They provide the updates of the client, and those clients need a reboot after the upgrade, which is something we don't like. We don't like to reboot the server after the upgrade because we have live applications. If we do a reboot, it can impact the business as well.

It sometimes behaves unusually. It sometimes stops our full services, and if we didn't upgrade to the better version or current version on the server, many a time, it blocks Microsoft patch upgrades. 

I have been working with this solution for around four years.

It is good. We don't have to worry much about bugs. We had a bug only once where we had not allowed for automatic upgrades, but it was upgrading. From the perspective of bugs, Symantec is fine.

I would rate them an eight out of 10. Sometimes, it takes a lot of time to connect to Symantec through a call. They usually reply by email. They are also reachable on call, but it takes lots of time to connect to them by phone.

Positive

It is complex. All servers report to SEPM, then after SEPM, they report to EP. It is complex and not straightforward. We have different environments for inside, outside, and DMZ. So, for that, it is kind of complex.

Its price is fair.

It is a very good solution. Symantec is a traditional antivirus, and among all traditional antivirus solutions, Symantec is very good. It has good updates.

I would advise others to go for the cloud environment. The cloud environment is very good, and there are a lot of new features.

I would rate it an eight out of 10.