Symantec Endpoint Security Reviews

We use it for endpoint protection at the desktop level.

The antivirus and antimalware features are good. Reporting is also pretty good.

The platform itself can be improved as there's no way to track how infections get into the organization. You're just notified if there is an instance. Still, there's no way to actually determine a workflow of how it actually came in, how it was executed, and how it was distributed within the enterprise if indeed it did migrate or propagate through.

It would be really good if they had a proactive feature to isolate the node with the agent on the endpoint when it sees some type of erroneous behavior and knock it off the network. Then it can't probably get onto another node. You can usually do that with a policy setting.

It'll also help if they give us more of an explanation of what the malware tries to do once it's on the network. For example, if it's trying to call home to a specific IP or domain. We can use that information to beef up the firewall rules.

Case in point, we had an issue where we had a machine that was affected. It immediately tried to find other machines on that network segment with the same vulnerability to infect that particular node. There was no way to lock that node down immediately when you see something out of the ordinary.

I have been using Symantec Endpoint Protection for about 13 years.

Stability has been fair. There have been some issues with the CPU utilization on some of the endpoints. A little bit of a resource hog, but we've been able to work through it for the most part.

Symantec Endpoint Protection scaled very well. It's actually very easy to use.

The initial setup was very straightforward. It probably took an afternoon or maybe a day to install and deploy. 

I implemented Symantec Endpoint Protection by myself. 

We usually go on a per-seat basis, and it's usually yearly. The prices fluctuate, but this year I think it was maybe around $12,000. If you're looking at the on-prem costs for the virtual server and the licensing for the server, that would be the only extra cost.

Symantec Endpoint Protection is very straightforward to implement. The installation of the septum server on-prem is very straightforward, and you can push the radio to your endpoints almost instantly. 

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Symantec Endpoint Protection a six.

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.

The primary reason we use the solution is to protect the device and to be sure there isn't any kind of malware. The device is protected from any kind of malware is the basic level of the solution. We use the control applications to blacklist applications that we don't need to use, and that we have blocked on the Microsoft group policy. We use the antivirus to do the same thing. That way, if the final user tries to install any non-approved software, the antivirus removes or blocks the application.

The protection against any kind of malware is the most important feature of this product. It really helps to keep the operations system clean.

The product has been quite stable.

We've found the scalability to be very good.

Today, it's just a question of understanding the update package of the operating system as the antivirus software in and of itself is not enough.

This is due to the fact that if I have not updated Windows, I have a huge breach of security. The idea for us, from our point of view, is that the antivirus needs to understand how if Windows is safe. If the operating system is safe, the antiviral has less work to do. From a security point of view, both of them need to work together. It's not just the task of the antivirus to keep all the computers safe. The operating system needs to be updated too.

The operating system and the antivirus need to communicate better with each other and exchange information so that I know everything is secure. It needs to be more clear when things aren't aligned and need to be repaired, in order to avoid the risk of a security breach.

The technical support could be a bit better.

We've been using the solution for just about a year or so. I'm quite new to the company. That said, it's my understanding that the company has been using the solution for about six years or so.

The stability is very good. It's reliable. It doesn't crash or freeze. There are no bugs or glitches. It's quite good.

We have no problem with scalability so far. We are a growing team and company and so far it's been growing with us. It scales well. 

As of today, we have around 4,000 users, however, we are still growing.

Technical support is a bit of an issue. In Brazil, when we need technical support we use a partner. Every time that we contact Symantec, it will take a long time to get the answer. The primary contact is the partner who implements the software here. It's a local company from Brazil that handles all the support information and services for us. We just needed to make contact with Symantec one time however, the answer was so long that the partner got the answer to us first and therefore we really stopped trying to directly reach out.

We don't have too much trouble with deploying the solution. 

We have a policy software that controls all the policies and deploys with the software. I really don't know too much beyond that, however, as we have a security team that handled the installation, deployment, and maintenance. I haven't heard anything negative, however, which makes me assume everything is very straightforward.

We pay a yearly licensing fee. The fee was paid last year, however, I don't have access to the exact costs. It may have been renewed before I started working with the company.

Today, we are looking at Kaspersky. We want to see if it can handle dealing with Windows updates in a better way than Symantec. They have some interesting features that take a pretty deep look inside the Windows system in order to protect it. We feel the antivirus needs to go farther into the Windows system and down to the endpoints themselves and really take a look around in order to effectively protect it from attacks. We're currently searching for more information to see how Kaspersky stacks up.

The pricing is also quite different between the two solutions and this may affect our decision as well.

We're just a customer and end-user.

I'm finding that, in Brazil, Symantec's services need to be closer to the customer and the antivirus itself is not enough for an IT department to keep the company safe. It can't just protect user data. It needs to go further and protect all of the company's devices and software. 

I can have the best antivirus software, however, we find that if our Windows disk is not updated or has a security branch, something can attack the security branch in the Windows and sometimes it's a virus software. That's why Windows needs to work more closely with this product - or any antivirus.

In general, I would rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

The primary use case for this solution is to protect all endpoints in a complex enterprise environment, including it's servers, workstation, Citrix-based systems, includes Windows, Linux and Macs. We're a small company, under 50 users. But we deploy Symantec to companies that have from a few hundred to dozens of thousand users, therefore I have extensive experience with the product. We are partners and resellers and I'm a senior professional services engineer. 

All the features are great with the core being antivirus, spyware, Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Machine Learning, and capabilities like reputation analysis based on their huge footprint, firewall, IPS and device control are very useful at protecting the environment. Unfortunately many companies just use the basic, out of the box solution. Even when they turn on the firewall, they will use it just with its default settings, but if you really learn how to use it and deploy it correctly, it provides much more protection. With Symantec adopting the AI and many of the new protection features like file-less attacks and other modern technologies, it's very attractive and makes a big difference. EPPs by nature have so many parts to it, they can be daunting, even to those with experience, but once deployed it's quite easy to use.

This is a very complete solution. It has all the pieces that you need. Like many companies, Symantec also sell an EDR solution, and it is a feature you'd want to add to an endpoint solution. 

I think Symantec, like many of its competitors, doesn't have comprehensive built-in reporting. The product keeps improving, but reporting and alerting is not keeping pace, and these are critical.

I've been using this solution for about 13 years. 

This is a very stable solution. 

In terms of scalability, it's one of the best out there. I did a project for a major hotel chain that also has rental properties. Some of these places have five users, and then others have 200 users. When you deploy in a company like that, scalability and the ability to protect remote places without having to put a server out there, is critical. And Symantec just really scales up. It's very efficient. It can be used in a company that has a lot of remote users, like oil companies with remote locations. It's a solution that allows you to support a worldwide company that might have offices in dozens of countries, and it just works.

The technical support is similar to other companies. You're assigned a low level guy on your first call. We don't have issues with the basic things, it's more about the bigger problems so we always have to escalate and they do a good job of it.

The initial setup is super easy. Deployment is faster than in other solutions but it still takes time. It needs to be done in steps. You initiate it with a test and pilot to discover false positives or whether it might be blocking things or creating an issue on your network. A lot of companies have custom code programs and typically any EEP would trigger false positives. The companies we deploy to are generally medium or large so you have to be strict on your load because the impact can be brutal if not done right. You then carry out an expanded pilot and once you're satisfied that it's not going to bring your network down, you deploy it almost at once. You go from deploying it to 25 endpoints as a test to maybe 200 endpoints as an expanded pilot, and then you deploy it to 5,000 computers over a relatively short period of time.

We generally offer up to a six-month window for implementation and it usually takes between two weeks to six months to fully deploy. The process isn't difficult, you just have to be careful. You can deploy all the features in a month if it's a small environment including all the testing and pilot phases. 

My understanding is that the price is quite good and competitive. My advise is to invest the necessary time and effort to deploy it correctly and with minimal disruption. In the enterprise arena, if you don't have the in-house expertise in the more complex areas of the product do your organization a favor and get expert assistance.

Many, there are numerous great solutions in this market and they all offer great protection. The differences are in the feature sets, some for example don't have firewall, device control or Intrusion Preventions, or for example don't have the scalability required to deploy to companies that have hundreds of remote offices that have a few computers and hardly any bandwidth, and they can cause bottlenecks.

It's like any enterprise solution, it needs to be done professionally. People complain about Symantec, claiming it's messed up their system but I've deployed it to hundreds of places of all sizes and have had few issues. The problems are self-induced because the people deploying didn't know what they were doing, and didn't understand the solution. They didn't do the pilot, they didn't do the best practices. And so something happened, messed up the system, and created problems, and they blamed the product. 

This remains a very viable solution. There's a lot of sexier stuff out there, but Symantec brings a lot to the table with their introduction of AI and the latest technologies. They continue to be a well-designed system that just works. 

I would rate this solution a nine out of 10. 

Symantec Endpoint Security's function is to protect our assets.

The most valuable feature of Symantec Endpoint Security is the protection of our systems.

Symantec Endpoint Security can improve management because it is difficult to do. It is not a straightforward tool to use. Additionally, the dashboards and reports could be better. It is difficult to understand what exactly is your current status.

I have been using Symantec Endpoint Security for approximately one year.

Symantec Endpoint Security is stable.

The scalability of Symantec Endpoint Security is good, and easy to do.

We have approximately 10,000 users using this solution.

The support from Symantec Endpoint Security is very good.

The initial setup of Symantec Endpoint Security is complex. However, not as complicated as other solutions, Symantec VIP.

I rate the initial setup of Symantec Endpoint Security a three out of five.

The most important aspect of a security solution is having good reports, to help understand what's going on. This is one of the main points that a security team should have. Good visibility from the reports and an easy understanding of what's going on.

I rate Symantec Endpoint Security a seven out of ten.

Symantec End-User Endpoint Security is a good product.

It's a robust product.

There are several new products that offer better protection.

The artificial intelligence of Symantec End-User Endpoint Security could be better.

The web filter could be improved.

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

It's a stable product, very robust.

Symantec End-User Endpoint Security is a scalable product.

We have 500 users in our organization.

I have not contacted technical support.

Apart from Symantec End-User Endpoint Security, I use other platforms. We have many different systems, such as Sandbox products, and other EDRs.

The installation is very easy.

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

We are not satisfied with the technical support. Since Broadcom took over responsibility for its engagement, we have faced many issues. This is why we wish to switch to a different antivirus solution. We are currently in contact with the relevant distributors and suppliers in regards to this issue. We do not wish to encounter the same challenges that we face at present. Before switching to Sophos, we would first have to ensure that all our support-related concerns are addressed.

When an issue happens in my cell, we can log in a ticket on the Symantec or Broadcom websites. From this point, the response time is very slow. Sometimes technical support lacks a proper or firsthand knowledge of an issue and finds itself lacking in the appropriate response. We feel this to be very irritating. The customer wishes for the issue to be resolved, but tech support has shown itself to be inadequate in dealing with enterprise tech products. 

We have been using Symantec End-User Endpoint Security for the last five or six years. 

We are not satisfied with the technical support and find it greatly lacking.

In the past we worked with Sophos, although not with its antivirus product but with Cyberoam Firewall. We recently purchased a new Sophos firewall product, Sophos 101, which is a network firewall solution. The difference is that we did not previously have the appropriate experience with related antivirus products, but now we are in a position to analyze how best Sophos endpoint protection can meet our needs. 

While the solution is easy to use, it is solely because of the support issues we raised that we plan to switch products. 

When it comes to pricing, Sophos is preferable to Symantec. It provides a cloud-based dashboard which affords control and an easy centralized management system. This is of considerable benefit and explains why we have decided to go with Sophos. 

Owing to the support issues we raised, we can only rate Symantec End-User Endpoint Security as a five out of ten. 

We're primarily using this solution for our workstations.

The product is a good antivirus in terms of the fact that it can do real-time scanning and scheduling. We can plan scans for the weekend. We can also control it on the server for all the clients it manages. 

The solution gets real-time updates of virus definition files from the internet. If there is any malware attack or something, then it can immediately download and apply it to the clients.

The initial setup is straightforward.

The pricing is pretty good. We don't find it too expensive to have in our organization.

We've had some issues with the performance. There have been some minor hiccups. Now it's better. Initially, it had some issues, not for all, but some of the systems only. We had applied a fix that was released in the 14.1 version. By 14.2 they fixed the issue. Ever since we applied 14.2, it's good.

During the scanning time, it could be less intrusive for the users. Right now, it's not exactly working quietly in the background.

Technical support could be more responsive.

I've been using the solution for six years at this point. It's been a while since we began working with it.

While we've had issues with stability in the past, since version 14.2 it hasn't been a problem. We no longer have issues.

The resources can be expanded with more load and all, however, I'm not sure how scalable it is in terms of expanding it.

Internally, there are likely 800 users that use this product.

We've dealt with technical support in the past. They are okay, however, they could be faster in their response time. We're not fully satisfied with their level of service.

We didn't previously use a different solution.

The initial setup is not too complex. It's pretty simple and straightforward. A company shouldn't have too much trouble with the implementation.

The installation of the server would have taken few hours, however, on the client site we attracted an automated installation, so it deployed from the server and we can pose the agent to the server from the client.

We had a manager and two consultants that handled the implementation.

We had a consultant assist us with the client.

We need licenses to use the product, however, the pricing is reasonable. It's not too expensive.

I'd recommend the solution. I'd rate it at an eight out of ten.