Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) today announced the launch of Symantec Hosted Endpoint Protection, a new cloud-based offering for small and medium sized organizations who wish to deploy comprehensive security for their computer systems without the need for additional hardware or management software. Customers will now be able to protect their Windows-based laptops, desktops, and file servers from the proliferation and growing sophistication of threats with the simplicity and convenience of a cloud-based service.
Harnessing more than eighteen years of experience developing award-winning technologies for anti-virus and endpoint protection, Symantec Hosted Endpoint Protection is designed to safeguard endpoint systems with a single solution managed from a Web-based console offering advanced protection from the endpoint to the gateway.
“As the hosted model for messaging security has become increasingly popular for its ease of management and deployment, organizations are similarly motivated by the reduced complexity that cloud-based services can offer while effectively protecting their endpoint systems” said Rowan Trollope, Senior Vice President, Symantec Hosted Services. “Symantec Hosted Endpoint Protection leverages our SaaS expertise to deliver advanced technologies that help protect customer systems without requiring additional hardware, management software, or dedicated IT staffing”
As threats become more complex and the global workforce increasingly more mobile, analysts have predicted that businesses will demand highly effective security solutions that are easy to set up and require minimal maintenance– features especially important to small and medium sized businesses that have limited resources to stay current with evolving security requirements while managing a myriad of additional IT responsibilities.
“Customers often experience pain when increased IT resources are required to stay abreast of evolving endpoint threats” said Christian Christiansen, VP of Security Products and Services, IDC. “To reduce these difficulties, customers want turn-key, endpoint solutions that provide the latest protection levels with easy set up, zero maintenance, and automatic upgrades. Security SaaS implementations can fully provide these solutions”
Symantec Hosted Endpoint Protection leverages the Symantec Global Intelligence Network, one of the largest security research networks in the world, and benefits from the network’s rapid threat identification and response. With Symantec Hosted Endpoint Protection, automatic security updates occur transparently over an Internet connection keeping employee systems current whether workers are in the office or on the road.
“We can get a much more robust solution delivered through the cloud than we would be able to host for ourselves, and at a much more reasonable cost” said David Wassenar, Vice President, IT, Apprise Software. “We don’t have to put any team member’s time into it, and we don’t have to spend money to provide the hardware redundancy on our end to ensure high availability for the solution”
Key Features and Benefits of Symantec Hosted Endpoint Protection
* Comprehensive Protection for Customer Systems: Advanced technologies for antivirus, antispyware, firewall and host intrusion prevention.
* Always-on Protection for Endpoints: Automated updates occur transparently over an Internet connection to keep employee systems current and consistent with client policies when employees are in the office or on the road – even when they’re not logged into their corporate VPN.
* Web-based Management Console: Administrators can access the administration portal over a supported Web-browser and corporate VPN access is not required to monitor and manage each computer. Administrators receive real-time alerts via SMS or email and can easily perform functions such as initiate a LiveUpdate to refresh system protection levels, view history on systems and change local policy settings.
* Ease of Management: Adds and manages new computers without requiring on-site management servers. Updates occur automatically and new features are introduced as they become available during the subscription period for no additional fee.
* Scalable: Flexibility provided through a hosted model allows the solution to scale to incorporate new endpoints quickly and efficiently without requiring additional hardware or management software.
* Fast to Deploy: Can be quickly deployed to users via standard download, an email invitation or silently pushed to the customer’s network.
“Getting hardware out of our data center and centrally managing all of our endpoints with a single Web interface has been a top priority for us” said Sumeet Lakhaney, IT Director for New York City-based Fourth Wall Restaurants which manages six upscale restaurants in Manhattan. “Our focus on building a next generation IT center means that we have moved to a SaaS model for all of our business applications which will standardize our environment and decrease our overall cost to serve”
Symantec Hosted Endpoint Protection is available now to customers in North America. It delivers antivirus, antispyware, firewall and host intrusion prevention for desktops and laptops and antivirus and antispyware for file servers. The service can be purchased on its own or in combination with other Symantec Hosted Services across email, web and IM.
To sign up for a free trial, visit www.messagelabs.com/trials/hep.
Symantec Hosted Endpoint Protection is part of a broad portfolio of flexible endpoint security protection solutions for SMB customers, including the Symantec Endpoint Protection Small Business Edition and Symantec Protection Suite Small Business Edition. Customers who are not yet ready to make the transition to SaaS can continue to rely on Symantec’s award winning SMB security portfolio.
About Symantec
Symantec is a global leader in providing security, storage and systems management solutions to help consumers and organizations secure and manage their information-driven world. Our software and services protect against more risks at more points, more completely and efficiently, enabling confidence wherever information is used or stored. More information is available at www.symantec.com.
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