We live in an emerging digital industrial economy… where cloud and mobility are driving demand to secure and manage a new flood of data…. where voice, video and the Internet of Things are transforming how we function… and where businesses are challenged to protect both their intellectual property and their customers’ information.
Information is the lifeblood of this economy and it is becoming ever more mobile. Information now flows from cloud platforms to mobile apps, and from enterprises’ data centers to their business partners in ever changing ecosystems.
And the information landscape just gets more complex, from both a compliance and security perspective, as companies go global and continue to move from ‘Information Here’ in glasshouse data centers to hyper-distributed ‘Information Everywhere’. The opportunity to leverage and analyze information is increasing quickly. But the challenge to protect that information is growing as well.
Information needs to be both secure and private – but it starts with security. Information must be communicated securely; it must be stored on secure platforms and have the appropriate access control. Privacy then becomes the policy of who gets access to what information – whether individuals, business or governments.
No matter how much that information may increase, where it resides or how it is used, Symantec’s job is to be there to protect it. And we’ve got a lot of experience in the areas that matter:
- 120 petabytes of data stored in the Norton Cloud
- We analyze over 8.4 billion email messages and 1.7 billion web requests a day
- We blocked an average of 568,700 malicious website per day in 2013
- We protect 1 billion systems around the world.
We have a responsibility to those who entrust us with their safety and security, every moment of every day. Our goal is to be the ‘Information Protection Authority’, enabling our IT customers to be the stewards of information within their organizations. That is the focal point of Symantec’s strategy and Vision of the Future built on the following areas:
Unified Information Management and Information Fabric create actionable intelligence across the enterprise – integrating rich metadata, creating a consistent global view of information and helping to deliver analytics-driven information governance. The Fabric is about connecting isolated repositories of information – enabling us to rethink information management and protection.
Unified Security integrates a variety of security technologies within an overall security process that delivers not just protection but detection and response.
- Integrated Security on-premises or as a service
- Protection from the most advanced threats by delivering cloud based security intelligence
- Making security visible, but not intrusive
- Using analytics to drive predictive security
Universal Identity. A trust model where there is authentication of both users and devices, leveraging biometrics, location, context and behavior. We envision a future with no passwords where the risk based decision about who gets access to what enterprise resources is driven by intelligent authentication.
So, how do we manage all of this? How do we keep information safe and secure when it’s growing at a remarkable rate? World data in 2010 was estimated at 1.2 zettabytes. In 2015, that is expected to rise to 7.9ZB and, in 2020, to 40ZB. Meanwhile the Internet of Things will grow to something like 30 billion connected devices in the next few years.
These are staggering leaps, taking place against a background of increasing technological complexity. Businesses have to deal with a vast array of heterogeneous platforms – OS, Legacy, Physical, Virtual, Private Cloud, Public Cloud, Hybrid Cloud – as well as a wide range of business needs, such as Classification, Archive, Discovery, Data Protection, Disaster Recovery, Availability and Performance.
And the threat landscape is becoming ever more challenging with new threats targeting an increasing attack surface – across the Cloud, mobile devices, social media, remote offices/workers, and malicious employees – using sophisticated technology and advanced persistent threats (APTs). In hard statistics (source: Symantec Internet Security Threat Report Vol.19), there’s been a:
- 91% increase in targeted attacks campaigns in 2013
- 62% increase in the number of breaches in 2013
- Over 552M identities were exposed via breaches in 2013
- 23 zero-day vulnerabilities discovered
- 38% of mobile users have experienced mobile cybercrime in past 12 months
To address these challenges, enterprises traditionally rely on vertical integration and point complexity. Our focus at Symantec is to bring order to the chaos. In this new world of ever expanding data and growing threats, the enterprise is challenged to keep systems up and running; control its platform destiny; reduce the cost of storing, managing and retrieving records; and protect everything, everywhere.
Our solutions today have been designed to deliver against these challenges: NetBackup; Enterprise Vault; Storage Foundation; Cluster Server; Data Insight. Ultimately, it’s about transitioning from today’s point solutions to tomorrow’s world of integrated and intelligent orchestration, with Cloud & ecosystem support. Our job at Symantec, therefore, is to give organizations the solutions they need, in order to:
- Detect and respond to advanced threats faster
- Secure access to information without loss
- Reduce the ‘security tax’, while strengthening our customers’ risk posture
- Enable a productive workforce and embrace BYOD
And the solutions we provide to make this happen?
- Data Loss Prevention
- Encryption
- Email Gateway
- Web Gateway
- VIP/MPKI
- Endpoint Protection
- Mobile Management
- Endpoint Management
- SSL and Trust Services
- Single Sign On
No matter how complex the threats, whether internal or external, these solutions are tailored to deliver the levels of integrated security now necessary to protect businesses in a world where data dissemination, access and retrieval on a massive and global scale are becoming the norm. To that end, our strategic on-going investment is aimed at ensuring Symantec remains at the front edge of threat detection keeping our customers constantly safe and secure.
Want to know more about Symantec's Vision of the Future? Check out this video: Innovation and Acceleration