Symantec Reveals Top Security and Storage Predictions for 2011; Cloud, Virtualization, Mobile Security and Social Media Predicted To Take Center Stage in the New Year

Dubai, UAE. - Dec. 12, 2010- Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) today announced its security and storage predictions for 2011 based on what its security and storage experts are observing in the information protection landscape.  Today's organizations are overloaded with information as data grows exponentially.  Almost daily, a new technology is either announced or brought to market with the promise of making the cost of doing business lower, more convenient and more timely. 

“Given today's stagnant and declining IT budgets, it's imperative that organizations achieve more value from their IT spending,” said Johnny Karam, Regional Director for Middle East and North Africa, Symantec. “By understanding challenges, risks and threats, organizations can plan and implement strategic technology initiatives such as virtualization, mobile security, encryption, backup and recovery, archiving and cloud computing to protect and manage their information more efficiently.”
Click to Tweet: Symantec predictions for 2011: Cloud, virtualization, mobile security and social media to take center stage http://bit.ly/ibGkcr 
New Technologies, New Challenges
As technologies become smarter and faster, the threats to these technological assets follow suit.  For example, the exponential consumer adoption of smart mobile devices will increasingly result in these devices making their way into enterprises through the back door, blurring the lines between business and personal use, and driving new IT security models to market in 2011.
Analyst firm IDC estimates that by year's end new mobile device shipments will have increased by 55 percent, and Gartner projects that in the same timeframe, 1.2 billion people will be using mobile phones capable of rich Web connectivity.  Although cyber criminals have shown little interest in mobile devices in the past, as devices grow more sophisticated and as a handful of mobile platforms corner the market, it is inevitable that attackers will target mobile devices in 2011 and that mobile devices will continue to grow as a source of confidential data loss.
Gap in Virtual Machine Protection
A similar challenge exists with the widespread adoption of virtualization.  Although many companies believe the information and applications within their virtual infrastructure are protected, many IT administrators will face the harsh reality that they are not in 2011.  The rapid adoption, fragmented implementation and lack of standardization of virtual infrastructures will continue to expose gaps in the security, backup and high availability of virtual environments.  Although virtualization decreases server costs, organizations are realizing that virtualization is simultaneously increasing management and storage costs, and without a plan to protect these environments, they may not realize the full return on investment.
Taking Control of Information
The exponential level of data growth is impeding organizations' ability to effectively manage and recover data.  In 2011, storage administrators must regain control of information, lose their “pack-rat” mentality and categorize what information is most important for retention purposes.  Otherwise, storage costs will continue to skyrocket, and organizations will face extensive recovery times and be unable to comply with regulatory compliance standards, including privacy laws, and e-Discovery.
Adding to the complexity is the use of social media to improve communication and productivity throughout an organization.  Although social media will continue to change the way we collaborate in 2011, IT organizations will also need to understand how to protect and manage these non-standard applications for recovery and discovery of business information that is communicated in these channels.  Social media archiving will grow in importance as companies unleash the power of social business but maintain archiving as a form of control to reduce information risk.
Additionally, as data goes “mobile” and becomes less centralized, regulators will start cracking down in 2011, which will drive organizations to increasingly implement encryption technologies, particularly for mobile devices.
The Next Generation Data Center of 2011
As organizations continue to manage with limited resources in 2011 while facing more intelligent and specific threats, IT will take a more strategic and innovative approach to solving problems.  While software will continue to drive innovation, 2011 will bring new delivery models in response to customers' need to ease IT operations.  Cloud computing, hosted services and appliances are examples of increasingly attractive delivery models that will change the landscape of today's data center by providing organizations with flexibility and ease of deployment.
Organizations will leverage public and private clouds as they become highly available in the coming year.  Tools will also emerge to manage this new, complex storage environment and to help IT administrators better understand and capture information about unstructured data that resides within it.  This will allow IT to fully utilize the benefits of the cloud and intelligently report to management.  While customers opt to take advantage of cloud messaging services, they are still finding that they can drive greater cost out of the discovery process by keeping their archives in-house.  This hybrid cloud archiving model allows organizations to use hosted messaging services while keeping their archives on-premise. This way they can combine email with other on-premise content sources like PSTs, IM and SharePoint that are relevant to the discovery process. 
Multimedia

• Video: 2011 Trend Predictions from Symantec
• Podcast: Internet Security Predictions

Resources

• Blog Post: Internet Security Predictions for 2011: The Shape of Things to Come
• SlideShare Presentation: Internet Security Predictions for 2011
• Survey: Symantec Internet Security Predictions for 2011
• 2010 Critical Infrastructure Protection Study
• 2010 Disaster Recovery Study
• 2010 Information Management Survey
• 2010 Ponemon Encryption Trends
• 2010 State of Enterprise Security Report
• 2010 State of the Data Center Report
• Internet Security Threat Report (ISTR), Volume XV
• Trojan.Hydraq Overview
• Mocana's Mobile & Smart Device Security Survey 2010: Concern Grows as Vulnerable Devices Proliferate, Smartphones are the Tip of the Iceberg (PDF)
• Stuxnet Dossier (PDF)

Related

• Symantec Data Protection Solutions
• Symantec Disaster Recovery Solutions
• Symantec High Availability Solutions
• Symantec Secure Information
• Symantec Security Management
• Symantec Storage Management
• Symantec Virtualization Management Solutions
• Symantec Web Security

Connect with Symantec

• Follow Symantec on Twitter
• Join Symantec on Facebook
• Read Industry Trend Resources on Delicious
• Visit Symantec Connect Business Community

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.

Virtualization and Cloud Technologies Add Complexity to Disaster Recovery Initiatives; Symantec research reveals gap in downtime expectations and reality

Dubai, UAE. – December 6, 2010– Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) has announced the global results of its sixth annual Symantec Disaster Recovery Study, which demonstrates the growing challenge of managing disparate virtual, physical and cloud resources because of added complexity for organizations protecting and recovering mission critical applications and data. In addition, the study shows that virtual systems are not properly protected.

The study highlights that nearly half – 44 percent – of data on virtual systems is not regularly backed up and only one in five respondents use replication and failover technologies to protect virtual environments. Respondents also indicated that 60 percent of virtualized servers are not covered in their current disaster recovery (DR) plans. This is up significantly from the 45 percent reported by respondents in 2009. 

Click to Tweet: Symantec study shows added complexity in DR initiatives resulting from virtualization and cloud: http://bit.ly/bGfA03

Inadequate Tools, Security and Control

Using multiple tools that manage and protect applications and data in virtual environments causes major difficulties for data center managers. In particular, nearly six in 10 of these respondents (58 percent) who encountered problems protecting mission-critical applications in virtual and physical environments reported this to be a large challenge for their organization.

In terms of cloud computing, respondents reported that their organization runs approximately 50 percent of mission-critical applications in the cloud. Two-thirds of respondents (66 percent) report that security is the main concern of putting applications in the cloud. However, the biggest challenge respondents face when implementing cloud computing and storage is the ability to control failovers and make resources highly available (55 percent).

Resource and Storage Constraints Hamper Backup

Respondents state that 82 percent of backups occur only weekly or less frequently, rather than daily. Resource constraints, lack of storage capacity, and incomplete adoption of advanced and more efficient protection methods hamper rapid deployment of virtual environments. In particular:

·         59 percent of respondents identified resource constraints (people, budget, and space) as the top challenge when backing up virtual machines.

·         Respondents state that the lack of available primary (57 percent) and backup storage (60 percent) hampers protecting mission critical data.

·         50 percent of respondents use advanced methods (clientless) to reduce the impact of virtual machine backups.

The Downtime and Recovery Gap

The study showed that the time required to recover from an outage is twice as long as respondents perceive it to be. When asked if a significant disaster were to occur at their organization that destroyed the main data center, respondents indicated that:

• They expected the downtime per outage to be two hours to be up and running after an outage.
• This is an improvement from 2009, when they reported it would take four hours to be up and running after an outage.
• The median downtime per outage in the last 12 months was five hours, more than doubling the two hour expectation.
• Organizations experienced on average four downtime incidents in the past 12 months.

Major Causes of Downtime

When asked what caused their organization to experience downtime over the past five years, respondents reported their outages were mainly from system upgrades, power outages and failures and cyberattacks. Specifically:

• 72 percent experienced an outage from system upgrades, resulting in 50.9 hours of downtime.
• 70 percent experienced an outage from power outages and failures, resulting in 11.3 hours of downtime.
• 63 percent experienced an outage from cyberattacks over the past 12 months resulting in 52.7 hours of downtime.

The study also showed a gap between those organizations that experience power outages and failures and those who have conducted an impact assessment for power outages and failures: Surprisingly, only 26 percent of respondents’ organizations have conducted a power outage and failure impact assessment.

About the 2010 Symantec Disaster Recovery Study

In its sixth year, the 2010 Symantec Disaster Recovery Study is an annual global study commissioned by Symantec to highlight business trends regarding disaster recovery planning and preparedness. Conducted by independent market research firm Applied Research West during October 2010, the study polled more than 1700 IT managers in large organizations across 18 countries in North America, Europe and the Middle East, Asia Pacific and South America to gain insight and understanding into some of the more complicated factors associated with disaster recovery.

Connect with Symantec

• Follow Symantec Storage on Twitter
• Follow NetBackup on Twitter
• Disaster recovery resources on Delicious
• Join Symantec on Facebook
• Symantec Connect Business Community

About Storage from Symantec

Symantec helps organizations secure and manage their information-driven world with storage management, email archiving, backup & recovery solutions.

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.

Symantec Enterprise Vault Positioned as a Leader in the Enterprise Information Archiving Magic Quadrant and Receives Strong Positive Rating in Vendor Rating

Dubai, UAE. - Nov. 30, 2010 - Symantec Corp. has announced that it has been positioned by Gartner Inc. in the Leaders Quadrant of the 2010 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Information Archiving (EIA) report1. In addition, Symantec received an overall positive rating from Gartner and its Enterprise Vault received a Strong Positive in a recent vendor report2. Symantec Enterprise Vault, which has been adopted by more than 15,000 organizations globally, helps customers store, manage and discover unstructured information across multiple content sources with a single solution. As the industry's most widely-deployed archiving solution, Enterprise Vault enables organizations to protect their information completely, deduplicate to reduce costs, delete information confidently and discover information efficiently.

“Enterprises are experiencing rapid growth of user data (stored on file shares), Microsoft SharePoint and other unstructured content. Much of this content is infrequently accessed after a period of time. Enterprises are looking for products that can deliver policy-based retention management and disposition, as well as legal hold and early case assessment, in a cost-effective way,” notes the Magic Quadrant report, which positions vendors based on their ability to execute and completeness of vision. “At this point, many vendors that offer e-mail archiving have added support for file archiving and SharePoint archiving. Leading vendors are taking this expanded information-archiving approach a step further -- they are increasingly adding support for instant messages, text messages, social networking content and, in some cases, even structured application data.”

“Symantec Enterprise Vault enables organizations to archive data for long term storage, set policies to classify and automatically delete information and simplify legal holds,” said Anthony Harrison, Senior Principal Solutions Specialist - Storage and Server Management, Symantec. “Enterprise Vault provides efficient storage of information so emails and documents coming from multiple content sources, such as Exchange, SharePoint and file shares, are only stored once. Enterprise Vault 9 adds new capabilities that allows customers to search for data beyond the archive stores to further streamline the e-Discovery process, save time and reduce costs.”

According to Gartner, approximately 70 percent of data is duplicate, and hasn't been accessed in over 90 days3. Enterprise Vault 9.0 helps mitigate this effect by archiving from sources where information can accumulate such as email, file servers and SharePoint. Doing so can dramatically reduce storage costs, improve backup times and streamline the e-Discovery process. Gartner research also shows that a well-deployed archiving strategy can save up to 60 percent in backup costs and reduce your backup times by up to 80 percent. In addition, Gartner research shows that through 2012, companies without an information governance strategy and technology for content archiving solutions will spend one-third more on e-Discovery than those with content archiving solutions4.





Enterprise Vault provides easy compliance and e-Discovery searches by combining emails from Microsoft Exchange Online with on-premise archived content sources into a central repository, allowing organizations to centrally manage e-Discovery and support internal investigations. Enterprise Vault expands content source support to include Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1), Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 and Domino 8.5.1.

Click to Tweet: Symantec Positioned as a Leader in the Enterprise Information Archiving Magic Quadrant: http://bit.ly/aQPbPQ



Additional Resources



The Gartner Enterprise Information Archiving Magic Quadrant (PDF)

Symantec Enterprise Vault

Symantec 2010 Information Management Survey

Symantec Eases Customers' Fears of Deleting Business Information

Connect with Enterprise Vault on Twitter



About Storage from Symantec



Symantec helps organizations secure and manage their information-driven world with storage management, archiving, backup & recovery solutions.



About the Magic Quadrant



The Magic Quadrants are copyrighted 2010 by Gartner, Inc. and are reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the "Leaders" quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.



Vendor Rating Disclaimer



The Vendor Rating is copyrighted October 1, 2010 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The Vendor Rating is an evaluation of a vendor as a whole and is based on Gartner's assessment of the vendor's vision and execution for a product or service, relative to Gartner's analysis of clients' requirements. It is not intended as a comparison relative to competitors in the market. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Vendor Rating, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

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.

Companies Concerned About the Convergence of Mobile Devices for Work and Personal Use, Ovum Study Reveals

Dubai, UAE - Nov. 28, 2010 - Just weeks after Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) announced a major update to its mobile security and management strategy, a new analyst report shows enterprises are increasingly concerned about the potential security risks mobile devices pose to corporate networks and data, especially as employees use the same device for both work and personal activities. The study also reveals the need for a layered approach to creating a holistic enterprise security strategy.


Based on a survey of enterprise users conducted by independent technology analyst, Ovum, and the European Association for e-Identity and Security (EEMA), “Corporate mobile device use and security,” an Ovum Best Practice report, found that nine of 10 organisations either provide, or soon will provide, mobile devices for employee use, with BlackBerry smartphones outnumbering all other devices.



The report finds enterprises trying to manage the consumerisation of mobile IT. Seventy percent of employees say they are allowed to use their corporate devices for personal activities. A smaller but still significant number of workers -- 48 percent - say they can use their personally owned mobile devices to connect to corporate systems.



Still, many enterprises are concerned about employees' mixing work-related tasks on their mobile devices with social networking, web conferencing, media sharing and other personal activities. Eight of 10 respondents believe smartphones expose their business to attack, with data leakage cited as the top security concern.



“Employees will want to use their devices, no matter who owns them, for both their work and personal lives,” said Graham Titterington, a principal analyst at Ovum and author of the report. “It is unrealistic to delineate between these uses for employees who are mobile and working out of the office for a large part of their time. That means organisations must establish a holistic security strategy that addresses the consumerisation of this fast-growing channel into corporate networks and data.”



Yet the survey found protection to be spotty. Among the 52 percent of organisations that use some form of authentication for mobile users, 62 percent rely on simple user name and password sign-on. Only 18 percent use Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) certificates, and just nine percent utilise two-factor authentication featuring one-time passwords. One quarter use anti-virus and anti-malware solutions.



Smartphone Security Briefing to Offer Insights to IT



On Nov. 24, EEMA and Symantec will host an EEMA UK Regional Interest Group Meeting in London. The meeting will feature a Smartphone Security Briefing that builds on the findings in the EEMA and Ovum report, with IT-focused presentations by representatives from EEMA, Symantec, Research In Motion, Gemalto, and Symantec's VeriSign Authentication Group. Attendees of the one-day seminar will learn:



“For many professionals, the mobile phone has become a mobile office,” said Johnny Karam, Regional Director - MENA, Symantec.” But that doesn't mean enterprises need to leave themselves vulnerable to data breach, malware and other threats. A layered approach to mobile security allows enterprises to protect themselves and their users at every point of access, even before a phone receives a message or data transmission.”



“As this new study bears out, putting a smartphone security strategy in place is now a business imperative,” said Roger Dean, director at EEMA. “But how many organisations have the in-house expertise required to develop and implement a mobile strategy that fits seamlessly with their overall security profile? This one-day briefing will help IT executives take that next step, while allowing them to put their toughest questions to a panel of mobile security experts.”



Symantec Mobile Security and Management



Symantec's broad offering of enterprise mobile solutions helps organisations embrace the consumerisation of IT by allowing users to select the devices of choice while enforcing governance, securing corporate data and gaining visibility and control of all mobile platforms including the iPad, iPhone, Android, Blackberry and others. These solutions give administrators the ability to centrally define and distribute security policies to devices over-the-air. Symantec's solutions for enterprise mobile security and management include:



Device Management: Symantec Mobile Management

Device Security: Symantec Endpoint Protection Mobile Edition, Symantec Network Access Control Mobile Edition

Device Encryption: PGP Mobile, PGP Support Package for BlackBerry

Strong Authentication: VeriSign Identity Protection (VIP) Access for Mobile, VeriSign Device Certificate Services

Supporting Quotes



“Smartphones have become natural extensions of our personal and professional lives,” said Marcus Klische, advisor for BlackBerry Security Group, Research In Motion. “Today, more and more mobile applications are saving user data, accessing corporate networks and tracking movements. The need for the devices to be properly tested, configured and secured is therefore crucial.”

“Securing mobile data, while enabling access to corporate information, is a persistent challenge for organisations,” said Antonio Aranda, product manager of Mobile Transactions Security at Gemalto. “But new advances in SIM-based security are opening the door to secure payment channels for such applications as mobile banking, while offering any organisation the added protection of one-time passwords and mobile identity assurance based on WPKI.”

Connect with Symantec



Follow Symantec on Twitter

Join Symantec on Facebook

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.



About Ovum



Ovum provides clients with independent and objective analysis that enables them to make better business and technology decisions. Our research draws upon over 400,000 interviews a year with business and technology, telecoms and sourcing decision-makers, giving Ovum and our clients unparalleled insight not only into business requirements but also the technology that organisations must support. Ovum is part of the Datamonitor group.