Norton and Symantec partnership at Symantec’s Security Technology and Response (STAR) division

fabiobr

Level 12
Thread author
Verified
Top Poster
Well-known
Mar 28, 2019
561
Norton teams up with Symantec’s Security Technology and Response (STAR) division, which is a global team of security engineers, virus hunters, threat analysts, malware analysts, and researchers that provide the underlying security technology, content, and support for all Symantec corporate and consumer security products. Our team of global threat analysts operates a follow-the-sun-model to provide 24x7 coverage to Symantec customers to track the latest developments on the threat landscape. Analysts continuously monitor a worldwide network of Symantec protected machines as well as a large-scale, global network of honey pots (machines designed to lure attackers). The group is Symantec’s and Norton’s eyes and ears when it comes to surveying and keeping a finger on the pulse of the Internet security threat landscape. With this partnership, we are able to provide you the latest, breaking news about all threats on the Internet landscape. Not only do we notify you of the latest outbreaks to be aware of, we also want to educate you about how to stay safe against these threats.

Some years ago, traditional antivirus was all that was needed to protect a computer from malware. However, with the huge shift in the threat landscape over the last few years, antivirus is just not enough to stay protected today. To address this, Norton has developed a collaborative partnership with the STAR team in order to alert readers as soon as a malware outbreak, data breach, fake app outbreak or other security incidents as they happen.

 
B

BVLon

You should not be worried about the Norton Products. Spinning off from Symantec and existing as a separate entity is the best thing that's ever happened to Norton in a long time as Symantec lately was... let's say in crysis. NortonLifeLock's shares are going progressively up (although now temporarily they've crashed again) and this will attract a lot of investors. Also, their market share has now once again started to increase vastly.
 

fabiobr

Level 12
Thread author
Verified
Top Poster
Well-known
Mar 28, 2019
561
You should not be worried about the Norton Products. Spinning off from Symantec and existing as a separate entity is the best thing that's ever happened to Norton in a long time as Symantec lately was... let's say in crysis. NortonLifeLock's shares are going progressively up (although now temporarily they've crashed again) and this will attract a lot of investors. Also, their market share has now once again started to increase vastly.
I really hope to see they investing at R&D and building new technologies, focused at home users.
 
B

BVLon

The NortonLifeLock spin-off wasn't an instant decision that's been taken over a cup of coffee - Symantec saw it coming in 2014. Throughout the years, Symantec has maintained a large portfolio of business products, adding more and more products on monthly basis. Symantec's approach wasn't consumer-friendly. It was rather product and profit-oriented. In Q2 2015 Symantec had a conference in a luxurious hotel in Central London (near the St. Paul's Cathedral), where the future of the company was decided - the Veritas division had to go. Veritas was generating unsatisfactory cash float not only for Symantec - the company had been acquired countless number of times and then resold, as its products don't really meet the consumer or IT administrator needs. One veritas product was Norton Ghost or its business version Symantec Backup Exec. These solutions, without stepping in to too much details, did not evolve one bit throughout the years. When "cloud" as a term and "cloud" backup became a thing, Veritas portfolio quickly became obsolete, on top of being difficult to manage.

After the Veritas demerging, the company became increasingly unstable, it's shares were going constantly down, the management had changed, CEOs were coming and going (Symantec worked without a CEO for 6 months and in 10 years changed 6 CEOs) and it was clear that, either the company will change its approach, or it will become a thing of the past.
Symantec, that was once winning awards for being one of the most ethical companies, 7th to be precise, after Adobe, was caught red-handed "n" number of times. Source code leaks, financial fraud, scareware tactics, bogus website certificates...all that affected the ability for the Norton division to research and innovate, as well as investor and shareholders relations with the company. The Norton division was kinda ripped of by Symantec, having to sponsor its increasingly dying business portfolio on one side and coping with its parent company's "bad reputation" on the other. Endpoint Protection was another line of products that was evolving at unsatisfactory pace in a highly-competitive field. It was stuck on V.11 and 12 for 2-3 years, and major enhancements such as SONAR and Insight were implemented 2-3 years after being available in Norton products.

When the Bluecoat CEO Greg Clark was appointed after the company merger (that was the period when Symantec was working without a CEO), he did mention couple of times that the consumer division has to be spun off and the business portfolio has to sold out to someone, better prepared to run it. There were indications under his management that a spin-off is coming. In late 2018 the Norton by Symantec logo was replaced with Norton LifeLock.
When Greg Clark stepped out of Symantec, just as many CEOs previously did in May 2019 (most probably under the pressure of the board of directors, as they did not quite like his vision), Richard Hill was appointed. At that time many people that I know, left Symantec - a long time community and support division manager, who I follow on twitter very closely and I've met here in London, shocked me with the news he was leaving the company - he was on Symantec's forums as head of Enhanced Testing so long as I remember the company, or having a PC. And he did mention it is not only him. Symantec's management wasn't great.

The final push towards the spin off was Broadcomm's interest in Symantec. That was the perfect opportunity for Symantec to let the consumer division finally breathe - and that's what they did. Richard Hill did not allow Broadcomm to absorb the consumer division, although Norton is the main appetizer for the acquisition. The NortonLifeLock will be far better off, not being under the Symantec umbrella anymore, but rather financing only the STAR team and managing its cash float the way it has to be managed. That's kinda like Norton paying Symantec exactly for what they need, instead of Symantec (now Broadcomm) taking all the cash and then feeding Norton with some breadcrumbs. It is unclear to me however, why Broadcomm sold certain parts of Symantec to Accenture. IMHO, Broadcomm will quickly get rid of Symantec in an Intel-McAfee-similar way. The entire scenario so far is just too much Intel. It is also unclear why NortonLifeLock had to go public. It would've been a lot better as a llc.

While neither I, nor anyone else can predict what will happen to Norton, Symantec's LifeLock buyout was an extremely smart move from their side, as this is the future of security. The upcoming months while the separate entity re-settles on the market will be critical. In the future, market analysts are expecting the company to stabilise.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

XLR8R

Level 4
Jan 20, 2020
164
BVLon said:
It is also unclear why NortonLifeLock had to go public. It would've been a lot better as a llc.

Because, they are a much smaller company with limited resources now, operating mostly in consumer space where Windows Defender is already a "good enough" and free product. There is a growing concern that you need to have financial resources to be very good, or else you won't survive as a pure play consumer focused product developer. Norton is going public, because it has plans separate from Symantec, and because it is laying grounds and getting financial support for a future push into SMB - without any of legacy baggage of Symantec. In broad future terms, the code base of Norton and Symantec will become increasingly different, the engines will diverge at one point, leaving possibly only the cloud as a shared platform by both products.

However, if Norton will not execute fast enough, it will fail fast. I even predict they may end up transitioning to an SDK engine based product with certain own technologies (probably a dual-engine solution like G-Data).
 
B

BVLon

Because, they are a much smaller company with limited resources now, operating mostly in consumer space where Windows Defender is already a "good enough" and free product. There is a growing concern that you need to have financial resources to be very good, or else you won't survive as a pure play consumer focused product developer. Norton is going public, because it has plans separate from Symantec, and because it is laying grounds and getting financial support for a future push into SMB - without any of legacy baggage of Symantec. In broad future terms, the code base of Norton and Symantec will become increasingly different, the engines will diverge at one point, leaving possibly only the cloud as a shared platform by both products.

However, if Norton will not execute fast enough, it will fail fast. I even predict they may end up transitioning to an SDK engine based product with certain own technologies (probably a dual-engine solution like G-Data).
NortonLifeLock will never become SDK-based.

1.) NortonLifeLock is planning to launch an array of SERVICES that with or without Symantec WILL generate consistent cash float.

2.) Norton has already signed a contract to have access to STAR, which is all they need.

3.) Throughout the years, Symantec apart from spreading all the Norton funds across greedy managers, has not contributed one bit, with funds, patents or anything else towards Norton.

4.) Symantec, now Broadcomm will be increasingly dependent on NortonLifeLock, as they have always been the most talented, stable and experienced team. Also, they are the only team that did not experience the huge turnover Symantec became known with. As Symantec will be looking to evolve, they can’t rely on their existing technology forever, no matter how good it is, maintaining a good relationship with NortonLifeLock will play a key role in keeping the company on par with the competition.

5.) We don’t know how long will Broadcomm keep Symantec. We’ve seen hardware vendors make purchases before, only to spin the company off in a not-very-late stage.

Norton is already executing fast enough. Their sales and market share have made a vast increase over the past few months. Their marketing division is getting strong again, the way it was before couple of Symantec 0-day managers decide they will trim it out of funds.
They offer, and will keep offering, the right tools and services for users and in the future small businesses. This year NortonLifeLock will expand into mobile insurances as well. NortonLifeLock will progress to a company that is more known with services, rather then with software, which we all must agree, is the right tactic.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

calumski

New Member
Feb 28, 2020
2
Norton has been feeding Symantec's Global Intelligence Network (GIN) and their 9 trillion lines of code for years. It was one of their major marketing ploys being the biggest civilian repository for IOC info. Now that BC have taken on Endpoint, Proxy (albeit that the Cloud proxy is now hosted on GCP instead of AWS), DLP and CASB, they have had to negotiate with Norton to maintain that relationship and still utilise the consumer-fed GIN.

McAfee have also noted an interest in Norton in the past but that's gone quiet recently.

BC have a huge amount of ground to cover - they've lost circa 95% of their UK account and presales team to Forcepoint and this is replicating slowly on a global scale. They've also move much of their customer base to a digital remote hands approach causing pain with many customers.

BC are a money machine and very efficient with it but there's unrest on both sides of the relationship with many people in Norton still uncertain as to how to the future looks.

The Accenture scoop up of the traditional CSS also has thrown confusion into the mix with more 'restructuring' to come in the next 12 months...
 

fabiobr

Level 12
Thread author
Verified
Top Poster
Well-known
Mar 28, 2019
561
Because, they are a much smaller company with limited resources now, operating mostly in consumer space where Windows Defender is already a "good enough" and free product. There is a growing concern that you need to have financial resources to be very good, or else you won't survive as a pure play consumer focused product developer. Norton is going public, because it has plans separate from Symantec, and because it is laying grounds and getting financial support for a future push into SMB - without any of legacy baggage of Symantec. In broad future terms, the code base of Norton and Symantec will become increasingly different, the engines will diverge at one point, leaving possibly only the cloud as a shared platform by both products.

However, if Norton will not execute fast enough, it will fail fast. I even predict they may end up transitioning to an SDK engine based product with certain own technologies (probably a dual-engine solution like G-Data).
That's why they relaunch Norton 360 and bought Lifelock = Make some difference from the usual Windows Defender and being more interesting for people, plus the aggressive pricing policy.

Norton has its advantage of being a known mark and installed on hundreds of computers (so good database for threats, that's an advantage over other companies) their challenge is keep that and don't loose its good score at test labs.

Today world data is money, they already have that.
 
Last edited:

fabiobr

Level 12
Thread author
Verified
Top Poster
Well-known
Mar 28, 2019
561
and because it is laying grounds and getting financial support for a future push into SMB - without any of legacy baggage of Symantec. In broad future terms, the code base of Norton and Symantec will become increasingly different, the engines will diverge at one point, leaving possibly only the cloud as a shared platform by both products.

However, if Norton will not execute fast enough, it will fail fast. I even predict they may end up transitioning to an SDK engine based product with certain own technologies (probably a dual-engine solution like G-Data).
I think that too: They'll be going to SMB market in the future, everything shows that, but with Norton mark.

They already got a good engine, I don't see why dual engine like GData. Now, without Symantec, they finally have time and resources to enhance their own technologies.

Symantec endpoint business that is going to loose in that and start to fail if it doesn't change anything.
 

calumski

New Member
Feb 28, 2020
2
"Symantec endpoint business that is going to loose in that and start to fail if it doesn't change anything."

I don't think that's going to make much of a difference to BC to be fair. Looking at the numbers, BC bought Symantec to fill a small gap in their portfolio. There's going to have to be a a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuge amount of engineering work that'll need to go on before BC can integrate Symantec into the CA or bigger BC portfolio. Will customers go for it? Possibly. But only if they're spending seven figures every year.
 

fabiobr

Level 12
Thread author
Verified
Top Poster
Well-known
Mar 28, 2019
561
"Symantec endpoint business that is going to loose in that and start to fail if it doesn't change anything."

I don't think that's going to make much of a difference to BC to be fair. Looking at the numbers, BC bought Symantec to fill a small gap in their portfolio. There's going to have to be a a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuge amount of engineering work that'll need to go on before BC can integrate Symantec into the CA or bigger BC portfolio. Will customers go for it? Possibly. But only if they're spending seven figures every year.
Broadcom maybe will over the Symantec name and integrate it to their products, maybe changing products names too.

Symantec is over, basically.
 

Burrito

Level 24
Verified
Top Poster
Well-known
May 16, 2018
1,363
Broadcom maybe will over the Symantec name and integrate it to their products, maybe changing products names too.

Symantec is over, basically.


Maybe.

But I would guess not.

Symantec still has name cache' for being one of the more effective enterprise products -- for years.

Name recognition is huge in business.

And Symantec is still one of the market share leaders.

1583427902363.png


This chart is possibly not accurate --- as Norton may not be broken out separately. But the point is the same.

But who knows.
 

Burrito

Level 24
Verified
Top Poster
Well-known
May 16, 2018
1,363
Broadcom maybe will over the Symantec name and integrate it to their products, maybe changing products names too.

Symantec is over, basically.

I didn't originally agree think this would be the case... but maybe so..


=======================
=======================

But Norton is doing just fine..



1584411440298.png
 
Last edited:

fabiobr

Level 12
Thread author
Verified
Top Poster
Well-known
Mar 28, 2019
561
I didn't originally agree think this would be the case... but maybe so..


=======================
=======================

But Norton is doing just fine..



View attachment 234925
Seems Broadcom only look for revenue and patent and doesn't care about Symantec or support.

The good part who cares about security stayed at Norton.

"Symantec’s evident strategy—post Broadcom acquisition—is insane and doomed to failure. Historically, this move is only matched by the tremendous blunder that Symantec made under John Thomson when it acquired Veritas."

That's it.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Burrito

About us

  • MalwareTips is a community-driven platform providing the latest information and resources on malware and cyber threats. Our team of experienced professionals and passionate volunteers work to keep the internet safe and secure. We provide accurate, up-to-date information and strive to build a strong and supportive community dedicated to cybersecurity.

User Menu

Follow us

Follow us on Facebook or Twitter to know first about the latest cybersecurity incidents and malware threats.

Top