Appliance Solutions’ Asset Recovery and Obsolete Inventory Disposition program helps the environment, significantly reduces capital expenditure costs  

Symantec’s fast-growing Appliance Solutions business unit recently executed a winning and environmentally responsible strategy to repurpose obsolete inventory and reduce infrastructure costs. Joining us to explain more is Kunal Karandikar, Manager Business Operations.

Q: Can you tell us a bit more about your team and your role within Appliance Solutions?

KK: Sure. The Delivery Operations team of Appliance Solutions is responsible to establish a world-class hardware operation in Symantec. Internally, my team develops business processes, systems and tools to efficiently manage a hardware operation in software-oriented Symantec. Externally, we manage go-to-market programs that help Sales win customers and guide Sales through the process of taking an appliance opportunity from order to shipment. Additionally, my team measures and analyzes data across the appliance business and provides information and insights that help Appliance Solutions to drive an outstanding end-to-end experience for our customers.​

Individually, I am responsible for various programs that map to my team’s charter above. Some contribute to top-line growth e.g. building Sales tools for customer acquisition. Others focus on improving cost efficiencies across the business, and an example in that regard is the Product End of Life business process, specifically Asset Recovery and Inventory Disposition.

Q: How did the Asset Recovery and Inventory Disposition program get started?

KK: In calendar 2013, Appliance Solutions implemented a voluntary Outreach and Upgrade Program (OUP) that offered the option to select customers of replacing existing legacy products with the latest-generation NetBackup appliance, at zero cost to the customer. OUP resulted in high customer satisfaction and was a successful program. However, Symantec received hundreds of legacy units as part of this program and that presented Appliance Solutions with a unique opportunity to recover value from these hardware assets. With the help of a vendor-partner in the USA, we harvested and refurbished to factory-specifications certain high value components from these returned legacy units e.g. hard drives, fiber channel cards. Symantec’s Supply Chain was then able to reuse these components as spare parts, opportune considering that obtaining additional spares would have been very expensive. The net result was a significantreduction in environmental impact by scrapping far fewer obsolete hardware goods, and the business unit avoided costs of approximately $1.9M related to Support and spare parts.

In yet another example, we recently managed the planned transition of a NetBackup appliance from a legacy model to a new one via the End of Life process. As the business accumulated the returned, used appliance units of the legacy model in different geographies, a special opportunity presented itself. As Symantec CFO Thomas Seifert mentioned recently, the company has approximately 530 R&D labs worldwide. These labs incur significant capital expenditures by purchasing hardware assets. To reduce the spend on capital expenditures, we refurbished the available supply of used and obsolete appliance hardware, and placed these appliances internally at R&D, Support and Training labs. The successful reuse of these hardware assets across the company resulted in avoiding $1.54M in capital expenditures, and demonstrated Symantec’s strong commitment to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) while devising a creative approach to gaining cost efficiencies.

Q: These are both great examples. What future goals has your team set with respect to CSR, and how will you set them?

KK:  For FY15, we will be collaborating closely with the Manufacturing and Supply Chain team in Appliance Solutions to set realistic and impactful goals for the business. Whenever we transition from an existing Appliance product to a new offering, we will evaluate and execute on the appropriate plan to reduce costs and help the environment.

Kunal Karandikar is a member of Symantec’s Appliance Solutions business unit. He can be reached at kunal_karandikar@symantec.com.

If your OpenStack installation uses Horizon with V3 Identity API, Tempest tests for Horizon won’t pass by default as of this writing. This entry describes changes needed to get the Tempest scenario test for Horizon to pass when using the V3 API.

Compromised Snapchat accounts have sent out photo messages of a box of Garcinia Cambogia, followed by a chat message with a suspicious link containing ‘groupon.com’ in the URL.

While Competitor ‘C’ is trying to position itself as the spokesperson of snapshot management, the engineering details are nowhere close to what marketing tends to spit out. The glistering messages are just a cover for poorly designed integration that defeats the very purpose of why someone should use snapshots in the first place. NetBackup Replication Director beats Competitor ‘C’, securing an impressive score of 16:1 for a workload constituting 1000 virtual machines proving its leadership in scalability and efficient performance.

Symantec Mobility: Suite 5.0 is almost here – building on our commitment to a new strategy, unveiled with the release of 4.0, to streamline and simplify the solution, so it can deliver significantly improved performance for customers and partners. The SaaS version is already out, with On-Premise scheduled for early October.

Symantec Mobility Suite 5.0 will:

• Offer a single console with flexible, modular packaging
• Improve the user experience (streamlined tasks and enrollment)
• Support Windows Phone 8.1, Samsung SAFE, and Apple iOS 8.
• Simplify Android device enrollment

Why does 5.0 matter so much? Because it is the most significant release to date for mobile management. While mobility offers ‘any device, any time, any place’ productivity, appealing to both enterprises and employees, that same flexibility comes with challenges – protecting corporate data on devices, separating personal and corporate information, managing diverse operating systems, and preventing devices and apps from becoming another attack vector.

Rather than rely on multiple point products, Symantec Mobility: Suite offers a unified solution of control that enforces consistent security standards, regardless of device type, without impeding the end user’s productivity or personal privacy. Mobility Suite simplifies mobility management, integrating mobile device management (MDM), mobile application management (MAM) and mobile threat protection into one comprehensive, single console solution. Whether a user’s environment is standardized on corporate-owned devices, allows them a ‘choose your own device’ (CYOD) program, embraces ‘bring your own device’ (BYOD) or manages a mix of these options, Mobility Suite makes it easier for enterprises to master security, while maximizing productivity.

Symantec customers can now support Windows 8.1 and Samsung SAFE devices. Expanding our platform support remains a top initiative.

As far as Apple iOS 8 is concerned, it introduced a number of enterprise-friendly capabilities designed to make managing iOS devices easier for IT organizations. In addition to more device-level controls, Apple has extended its mobile device management (MDM) APIs to enable businesses to manage the growing number of applications in the enterprise. The iOS 8 enterprise-oriented features, such as data management and content filtering, demonstrate the importance of securing the data and not simply the device. All of this aligns tightly with Symantec’s enterprise mobility strategy to provide a single platform that securely manages apps and data, in addition to the devices themselves – and underscores why Symantec had support fully in place for iOS 7 from day 1 and support for IOS 8 before it was even released.

VIDEO: Introducing Symantec Mobility: Suite

‘DO-IT-ALL’ CAMPAIGN HITS FULL FORCE

Mobile is how businesses everywhere now work—and live – delivering productivity anytime, anywhere. That is why Symantec has committed an entire portfolio of assets and dollars to its ‘Do-It-All’ campaign, which kicked off on September 9th this year. And already its visibility and impact on websites, both customers and partners, is being picked up and remarked on. We’re confident you’ll begin to see the outcomes of this significant investment in Mobility to expand our awareness footprint.

Hot off the presses is Enterprise Vault 11 Cumulative Hotfix 2. Weighing at 185 Mb for the download it consists of a series of changes that have been made to Enterprise Vault 11 following from it's original release.

As with the first cumulative update it's essential to read through both the read me document, and, the installation instructions.  If you don't then, like me, you might forget to run the database upgrade script that is required after the installation.

Have you installed the update yet?

Recently I was doing an install of Symantec DLP on a Red Hat Linux box that was a member of LDAP and had the /home folder automounted and didn't allow for us to write to that folder.  When a new local user was created via the adduser command it would not work without passing a command line option to change the location of the home directory (adduser -b /opt/users/).

During the install of Symantec DLP, the installer creates a user (protect, protect_update) and would fail because the home directory (/home/protect) could not be created.

So the question was asked… Can we create a user, populate the home directory outside of /home and then perform the install of the system?

Answer:  No… The installer for Symantec DLP needs to create the correct users and must be able to write /home when creating the user.  There is currently an enhancement request within Symantec to allow a pre-created account.

Thanks to all those who attended our webcast on enabling security and compliance with IT Management Suite.

Special thanks to ITS for the great presentation and content.

• Slides used during the webcast are included with this blog post (scroll down to the bottom)
• Download or Playback the Webcast Recording
• Our next webcast will be on December 3. Mark your calendar!

In the data security world, having a backup plan is important, especially for vendors protecting enterprise big data. Having a living list of data encryption ciphers could save a lot of time for cryptanalysts in the event that AES ever fails.

Control Compliance Suite isn’t a vulnerability assessment product; however at any point in time you can have CCS run a query to identify exactly which versions of Bash you have on your various Linux and UNIX systems.

CCS customers can also take advantage of the auto-discovery capabilities to discover rogue assets as well as to find rogue assets and identify which Apache web services are installed by default, but not used. With this information, the customer can then utilize Critical Systems Protection or DCS: Server Advanced to invoke the IPS, application control, and sandboxing capabilities to harden their infrastructure.

StatsD is a daemon that receives and aggregates metrics data. Cal Henderson wrote the original version of StatsD at flickr. There have been various implementations after since. Ian Malpass posted an article bout Etsy’s version of StatsD in 2011. By far it’s probably the most popular implementation. 

Etsy’s StatsD is implemented in NodeJS. It listens on a UDP port, processes the incoming metrics data, and flushes the data to the backend. 

A simple use case of StatD could be: 

The application uses StatsD client library to send metrics data to StatsD. StatsD listens to a UDP port and receives the metric data for a period of time, e.g. 10 seconds. It summarizes the data and flushes to the backend. The backend could be your database, files, or even console. 

How do I start?

Etsy describes the backend interfaces in the project’s github repository. The best way to understand StatsD backend interface is to play with the reference backends provided by StatsD. There are more backends available in  NPM. StatsD provides three backends, console, graphite, and repeater, nonetheless, you might want to change the format of the output data to match your own data model, or store the data to a different storage. This article shows you how to create a new StatsD backend in three steps.

Step 1: Prepare your environment

Install nodejs:

# apt-get install nodejs npm  

Install StatsD:

# git clone https://github.com/etsy/statsd.git
# cd statsd; cp exampleConfig.js config.js

Edit config.js

{
port: 8125
, backends: [ "./backends/console" ]
}

Start StatsD

# node stats.js ./config.js

You should be able to see the following messages in your console now. 

Step 2: Code structure and template backend

StatsD’s backend path is in statsd/node_modules. So first create a node-modules in your StatsD folder. Next, create a folder for your module, dummy-console in my example. You can arrange your source code however you want. I prefer to put my source code under lib, and test cases under test. My code structure would be like:

statsd/node_modules/dummy-console/
|— lib/
|— — index.js
|— test/
|— — test_case1.js
|— package.json

You might want to package and publish to your backend later on. So let's use npm to create the package description file.  

cd dummpu-console; npm init

Follow the instructions and fill in the information. Make sure you enter the correct entry point. In my example, it would be: 

Main module/entry point: (none) lib/index.js

Here is a template for your index.js. It does nothing but logging “Hello dummy?!” to the console for each flush event.

function dummyConsole(startupTime, config, emitter){
    var self = this;
    emitter.on('flush', function(timestamp, metrics) { self.flush(timestamp, metrics); });
    emitter.on('status', function(callback) { self.status(callback); });
}

dummyConsole.prototype.flush = function(timestamp, metrics) {
    console.log("Hello dummy?!");
}

dummyConsole.prototype.status = function(write) {
}

exports.init = function(startupTime, config, events) {
    var instance = new dummyConsole(startupTime, config, events);
    return true;
};

Let’s try it out. Edit your statsd/config.js. Add the following configuration:

{
port: 8125
, backends: [ "dummy-console" ]
}

Restart your StatsD you should see the following message:

Step 3: Process incoming data

Incoming data are time-series data. StatsD aggregates data in the flush interval and send the data to the backed with two parameters, timestamp, and metrics. The representation of metrics is: 

metrics: {
counters: counters,
gauges: gauges,
timers: timers,
sets: sets,
counter_rates: counter_rates,
timer_data: timer_data,
statsd_metrics: statsd_metrics,
pctThreshold: pctThreshold
}

A real metrics would look like below in a real world.

{ counters:
   { 'statsd.bad_lines_seen': 0,
     'statsd.packets_received': 581,
     'my.test.1': 2805 },
  gauges: { 'my.test.1': 4, 'statsd.timestamp_lag': 0 },
  timers: { 'my.test.1': [ 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1 ] },
  timer_counters: { 'my.test.1': 10 },
  sets: {},
  counter_rates:
   { 'statsd.bad_lines_seen': 0,
     'statsd.packets_received': 58.1,
     'my.test.1': 280.5 },
  timer_data:
   { 'my.test.1':
      { count_90: 9,
        mean_90: 0.3333333333333333,
        upper_90: 1,
        sum_90: 3,
        sum_squares_90: 3,
        std: 0.4898979485566356,
        upper: 1,
        lower: 0,
        count: 10,
        count_ps: 1,
        sum: 4,
        sum_squares: 4,
        mean: 0.4,
        median: 0 } },
  pctThreshold: [ 90 ],
  histogram: undefined,
  statsd_metrics: { processing_time: 0 } }

You can rearrange the data according to your backend data model. For example, to print all counters in the format of “name.counter = value”,  you can iterate the counters in the flush function as the followings. 

dummyConsole.prototype.flush = function(timestamp, metrics) {
    var counters = metrics.counters;
    for (var key in counters) {
        console.log(key +".counter =  ", counters[key]);
    }
}

Restart StatsD and you shall see:

Voila!  You have your first StatsD backend that can hanle counters ! 

We are pleased to announce the general availability of the Symantec eDiscovery Platform powered by Clearwell 8.0.

Issue : Symantec Data Center Security 6.0 client not getting IP via DHCP even with Windows core policy

Cause : Known issue with SDCSS 6.0  -  Windows default core policy is not allowing svchost.exe to access DHCPCSVC.DLL

Environment : Symantec Data Center Security 6.0

Solution : 

Edit the SDCSS prevention policy

Navigate to 

 Sandboxes

  - Core OS Service Options

    - Default Windows Services [def_winsvcs_ps,netsvcs_ps]

       - Registry Rules

         - Writeable resource List

             - Allow but log modifications to these Registry keys

Resource Path:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services

Program Path: %systemroot%\system32\svchost.exe

Also add DHCPCSVC.DLL to writable resource list.

Resource Path:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services

Program Path: %systemroot%\system32\DHCPCSVC.DLL

VIDEO: Introducing Symantec Mobility: Suite

Today mobility offers ‘any device, any time, any place’ productivity, appealing to both enterprises and employees.  However, that flexibility comes with challenges – protecting corporate data on devices, separating personal and corporate information, managing diverse operating systems, and preventing devices and apps from becoming another attack vector.

With Symantec™ Mobility: Suite (v.5.0), available today, customers can now rely on a single unified solution of control that enforces consistent security standards, regardless of device type, without impeding the end user’s productivity or personal privacy. Mobility Suite simplifies mobility management, integrating mobile device management (MDM), mobile application management (MAM) and mobile threat protection into one comprehensive, single console solution. Whether a user’s environment is standardized on corporate-owned devices, allows them a ‘choose your own device’ (CYOD) program, embraces ‘bring your own device’ (BYOD) or manages a mix of these options, Mobility Suite makes it easier for enterprises to master security, while maximizing productivity.

What is the significance of this release? It is the most significant mobile management release to date for Symantec.  We’ve made several acquisitions of mobile management products (Nukona, Odyssey, NitroDesk) over the years.  Mobility Suite integrates these acquisitions into one solution that makes it easy for customers to embrace mobility with a comprehensive, flexible solution that gives customers options for layered protection.  Let’s take a look at what’s new in Symantec™ Mobility: Suite.

A single console with flexible, modular packaging and improved pricing

The new Mobility Suite is a modular solution that delivers flexibility to implement the right level of control, as an organization’s mobility needs change.  From a single console, IT can manage mobile devices, apps, content, and threat protection.  Functionality will be turned on based on what a customer has licensed.  Customers have the option to license Symantec Mobility: Suite or individual modules: Mobility: Device Management (MDM), Mobility: Application Management (MAM), or Mobility: Threat Protection.  This release is available as SaaS and On-Premise versions.

Mobility Manager Console

An improved user experience

With mobility, the user experience is king.  Mobility Suite greatly improves the user experience with a new WorkHub app.  End-users will experience faster response from the app and enjoy a new, more modern look and feel.  This is only the beginning because we have more user experience improvements planned.

WorkHub app in iOS

Expanded platform support

Expanding our platform support remains a top initiative.  We’ve made great progress with this release.  Customers can now support Windows Phone 8.1, Samsung SAFE, and iOS 8 devices.

Enabling service provider partners

As service provider partners look to expand their enterprise mobility offerings, Symantec makes it easier to implement and deliver services to their customers.  With multi-tenancy capabilities and additional integration APIs, service provider partners can easily plug Mobility Suite into their infrastructure and streamline management of services.

Learn more about Symantec™ Mobility: Suite

Visit our website.  Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

Hello Everyone,

Symantec Endpoint Encryption v11.0.0 has been released. Release is now available on fileconnect to download.

New enhancements have been introuduced in the release, few of them are listed here:

Feature Highlights:

New integrated Endpoint Encryption client:

o   Built on PGP technology

o   Managed by Symantec Endpoint Encryption Management Server

Various client deployment options:

o   Provides support for never-connected and seldom-connected client deployment

o   Policy delivery though GPO, native policy or install-time policy

o   Seamless user registration and enrollment

Various Drive Encryption Recovery Options:

o   Help Desk recovery token

o   Self Recovery

o   WinPE based Recovery utility

Brand new Removable Media Encryption functionality:

o   Provides password or certificate encryption for various external drives

o   Group key support

o   Recovery certificate stored on the server

o   Provides policy based access control for removable storage devices

o   Provides policy for file exemption

o   Access Utility provides offline read/write of encrypted files for both Windows and Mac platforms

o   Self-decrypting archives

Product related links:

• System requirements for the server: http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH224478

• System requirements for the management console: http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH22447

• System requirements for the client: http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH224480

• Symantec Endpoint Encryption 11 Installation Guide: http://www.symantec.com/docs/DOC7523 

• Symantec Endpoint Encryption Management Server 11 Upgrade Guide: http://www.symantec.com/docs/DOC7715 

• Endpoint Encryption Landing Page: http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=productlanding&key=55414

For the 11th year, this October government, non-profits, the IT industry and local communities across the United States are coming together to celebrate National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM), a month-long celebration sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security, the National Cybersecurity Alliance and the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center to bring awareness to the latest developments in cybersecurity and the importance of ensuring all stakeholders are prepared to protect themselves and their businesses against the ever changing threats of our technology-driven world.

President Obama underlies the importance of this month in his annual proclamation:

“Cyber threats pose one of the gravest national security dangers the United States faces.  They jeopardize our country's critical infrastructure, endanger our individual liberties, and threaten every American's way of life.  When our Nation's intellectual property is stolen, it harms our economy, and when a victim experiences online theft, fraud, or abuse, it puts all of us at risk.  During National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, we continue our work to make our cyberspace more secure, and we redouble our efforts to bring attention to the role we can each play.” – President Barack Obama

Aligned to this year’s theme“Our Shared Responsibility” we celebrate NCSAM with a series of articles highlighting the crucial role Symantec plays as a key partner in enabling everyone to safely manage their information-driven world.  Today we feature an article written by Marian Merritt, Director, Cyber Education and Online Safety Programs detailing the first day of classes for students in Symantec’s SC3 training program.

SC3 Students Have An Exciting First Day at NPower Brooklyn Site

https://community.norton.com/blogs/symantec-cyber-education/sc3-students-have-exciting-first-day-npower-brooklyn-site

Ryan Scott, founder of Causecast and a contributor for Forbes, recently highlighted Symantec's commitment to skills-based employee volunteerism in his article below.

I’m always interested to see how companies are doubling down on their employee volunteering programs, and in the process reinventing the possibilities for what these programs can become. 

Symantec is one of the companies out there that is applying a ton of passion and creativity to their program, and the results are fascinating. Their Symantec Service Corps program is an outstanding offshoot of their strong overall volunteer program, bringing together 10 employees from around the globe to provide pro bono consulting to NGOs in a specific region of the world.

Read the rest of the article here!

Over the last few years there has been a steady increase in the amount of 'stuff' you can do with Enterprise Vault from the command line. Specifically from Powershell.

Just published is this excellent guide from Symantec with all of the Powershell information referenced. Take a look, it's pretty good.

Here is some of September 2014's most viewed content in the Storage and Clustering community:

1. VCS Cluster not Starting.
2. Configuring Redis High Availability
3. How to Check VCS Version and Update
4. Veritas Disk Group Disabled
5. How to find the LUN size with Veritas Commands?
6. HBA Checking Commands
7. Veritas Operations Manager (VOM) Videos
8. SFHA Solutions 6.0.1: Using Veritas Cluster Server Simulator
9. NEW RELEASE: Introducing Storage Foundation High Availability 6.1
10. SFHA Solutions 6.0.1: About the Cluster Manager (Veritas Cluster Server Java Console) and Veritas Operations Manager

​

Miss seeing the September Newsletter? Available here.