Symantec Endpoint Security Reviews

A couple of our customers have deployed and are using Symantec Endpoint Protection.

I joined COMPAREX eight months back, and they have been using Symantec Endpoint Protection for two and a half years.

Symantec has cloud-based endpoint protection, so whether a user is off the network or on the network, the endpoint will be protected by the cloud.

It has very unique features, which are not available with other vendors. E.g., there is a feature called SONAR.

You can integrate it using ATP, so all the endpoints communicate to each other on the security platform. 

17 million sensors are fitted all over the world. 

About four years back, Symantec's signature was very heavy and their signature patch was around 200MB or 300MB files.

Symantec Endpoint Protection is stable product, if you compare it other vendors, like McAfee or Trend Micro. McAfee was acquired by the Intel, who is very not strong in security patterns.

Our German team manages the maintenance.

The scalability is okay. I would rate it as a nine out of ten. Users are a bit afraid of the integration with ATP, as it is increasing scan times when downloading up to two to seven seconds.

We have around 2500 employee over all the globe. All the endpoints on laptops or desktops are running Symantec Endpoint Protection. Apart from that, we have multiple customers who have deployed the Symantec Endpoint Protection solution.

The technical support is very good. They have an Indian support team, so there are no delays in receiving support.

Their R&D teams are very strong in remediation.

We were previously using Trend Micro Smart Protection Complete.

The initial setup is very straightforward, not complex.

Deployment time depends on the user size. E.g., 200 users can be implemented in two days.

We have a dedicated delivery team to deploy the solution.

It is very easy to configure. There are no challenges when implementing this solution.

We have seen ROI.

Each annual client license is around 1200 or 1600 INR.

Zero-day threat or advanced attacks should be part of the endpoint. The product should not require you to buy a separate license.

It is a very good product. They are a very strong leader in the Indian market.

We use Symantec Endpoint Security as an antivirus solution to protect our servers.

The product has valuable features for insights.

There could be definition updates installed and running for the product, similar to new EDR solutions that receive updates from the internet. We still have legacy concepts where clients have installed definitions themselves. It could be more effective. Additionally, the memory usage by the product could be reduced.

We have been using Symantec Endpoint Security for ten years.

I rate the platform’s stability an eight out of ten.

We have 13000 Symantec Endpoint Security users in our organization. I rate its scalability an eight out of ten.

The technical support team’s response time is slow.

The initial setup process is easy.

I rate the product's pricing a six out of ten.

I rate Symantec Endpoint Security a seven out of ten.

We use it for endpoint protection at the desktop level.

The antivirus and antimalware features are good. Reporting is also pretty good.

The platform itself can be improved as there's no way to track how infections get into the organization. You're just notified if there is an instance. Still, there's no way to actually determine a workflow of how it actually came in, how it was executed, and how it was distributed within the enterprise if indeed it did migrate or propagate through.

It would be really good if they had a proactive feature to isolate the node with the agent on the endpoint when it sees some type of erroneous behavior and knock it off the network. Then it can't probably get onto another node. You can usually do that with a policy setting.

It'll also help if they give us more of an explanation of what the malware tries to do once it's on the network. For example, if it's trying to call home to a specific IP or domain. We can use that information to beef up the firewall rules.

Case in point, we had an issue where we had a machine that was affected. It immediately tried to find other machines on that network segment with the same vulnerability to infect that particular node. There was no way to lock that node down immediately when you see something out of the ordinary.

I have been using Symantec Endpoint Protection for about 13 years.

Stability has been fair. There have been some issues with the CPU utilization on some of the endpoints. A little bit of a resource hog, but we've been able to work through it for the most part.

Symantec Endpoint Protection scaled very well. It's actually very easy to use.

The initial setup was very straightforward. It probably took an afternoon or maybe a day to install and deploy. 

I implemented Symantec Endpoint Protection by myself. 

We usually go on a per-seat basis, and it's usually yearly. The prices fluctuate, but this year I think it was maybe around $12,000. If you're looking at the on-prem costs for the virtual server and the licensing for the server, that would be the only extra cost.

Symantec Endpoint Protection is very straightforward to implement. The installation of the septum server on-prem is very straightforward, and you can push the radio to your endpoints almost instantly. 

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Symantec Endpoint Protection a six.

We used Symantec End-User Endpoint Security for a thin client for our servers and the full package for the user's systems.

Some of the most valuable features were antivirus, malware, and spyware. They were really good.

We had trouble with the advanced features, such as the firewall builder and all the network protection modules. We were having a lot of issues because it would sometimes block users or the printing, or it would create issues with the network access resources.

We were using the on-premise version of Symantec End-User Endpoint Security and one of the reasons to use the on-premise versions was to save the network traffic from the cloud. However, because we deployed the full package, the client's computers were really slow most of the time. End-user used to complain that their computers are running slow. It was not only the antivirus because the user had to run other applications as well, in parallel. As soon as we removed Symantec End-User Endpoint Security, the user did see a lot of improvement in their hardware performance, such as the CPU usage being lower and memory resources going down. 

The background scanning performance should be improved because it makes the computers run slow and we had the latest hardware, but it was still having issues. Their engine needs to be improved for the scanning.

I have been using Symantec End-User Endpoint Security for 10 years.

The solution is stable.

We had more than 10 users using this solution in my organization.

The installation is straightforward. The full deployment took approximately two weeks.

We did the implementation of Symantec End-User Endpoint Security ourselves.

We have one person that supports this solution.

We are phasing out the use of Symantec End-User Endpoint Security in my company and we only have a small number of systems using it at this time.

We plan to switch to Cisco Secure Endpoint.

I rate Symantec End-User Endpoint Security a seven out of ten.

Our primary use case of this product is endpoint security. We use it to secure our environment and endpoints—the basic purpose of antivirus products. 

This solution is deployed on-premises. 

One of the most valuable features is its antivirus database, which is current and updated daily. Another valuable feature is its capacity to be managed by a single server. The solution is managed by a secure server, so all the endpoints are managed from a central point. 

For me, Symantec has been working fine. I'm not dealing with security inside the company, I'm just in the network part, so I can't think of any suggestions for improvement. 

As for some features I would like to see, I'd like a retrospective action feature similar to Cisco Secure Endpoint's. Some antiviruses don't allow you to re-scan a product that was in the former scan—for example, if a file was classified as proper, but then for some reason the file was changed, we need an antivirus with retrospective capability. We need EPP and EDR products in a secured environment. 

We have been using this product for more than 10 years. 

This product is stable. We've been using it for 10 years, and I can say that it has been stable. 

Basically, once the product is installed on the server, there is no maintenance to do. Maybe there are some updates, moving from a lower to a higher version, but this is the main maintenance that people do. 

This product is easy to scale. Normally, such a product isn't easy to scale nor to manage, but this solution is user-friendly and isn't complicated to manage. In my company, this product is deployed on all the workstations—more than 1,700 PCs.

I'm not dealing with this product on the front line—it's managed by my colleagues on the security team—but I think Symantec's technical support is fine. If we ever have an issue, I think we raise a ticket to Symantec's support center, and they take care of us. 

Deploying Symantec is easy—when you install it, you click "next," "next," "next," and then you update the antivirus. When you start, it's already directly in production. For me, the initial setup was not a big deal. We deployed this solution internally. 

We implemented this solution through an in-house team. 

We are currently testing Cisco Secure Endpoint for endpoint protection, and we have been using it for one year. I prefer it because Cisco is one of the big network and security vendors, so when they sell a product, they're sure about the whole performance of the product. The product must have a good reputation because the brand itself says something. 

I rate Symantec End User Endpoint Security an eight out of ten, and would recommend it to others. 

We're a large company with half of our business in the UK and half throughout the rest of Europe. We deal with about 13 countries and I work from Serbia. Our business focuses on train and bus transport, and sometimes ferry services. We're using the solution to mitigate security risks. We were considering solutions for endpoint protection and decided to go with Symantec for our work stations and servers. It offers anti-malware plus a firewall and some other functionalities. I'm an IT manager. 

I like the antivirus and the local firewall that the solution provides. It's user friendly with a good dashboard. 

I'd like to see a full anti-ransomware solution because there are some anti-ransomware functionalities that would assist us if they were included in the solution. 

I've been using Symantec End-User Endpoint Security for about six years.

The solution is very stable. 

We're not a big business in Serbia but scalability is easy. We have around 160 workstations and about 130 users. 

We have a contract with the local Symantec partner in Serbia so we can speak to them in our language. The support is very good. 

The initial setup is rather simple. 

The license for this solution is purchased on an annual bases. The price could be cheaper but it's not too bad. We also pay for technical support which we get locally here in Serbia.

Symantec is not the only endpoint security solution that we actually have experience with but I would recommend it. I think it's one of the best solutions currently on the market.

I rate this solution an eight out of ten.

I am working as an endpoint security consultant. I'm not only working on Symantec. I also work with Kaspersky, McAfee, and all other vendors. I found Symantec is the best.

Symantec is top of all of the antivirus tools. I couldn't find any single incident that happened. Symantec was not the leader previously, McAfee and Kaspersky were. This is a new game.

In Symantec Endpoint Protection, the most valuable feature I like is the good performance.

With Symantec, I always know this tool will be reliable and with the latest protection.

The device control level and application control level should improve. I am finding a lot of issues when I block the devices, like a printer or scanner. 

In the classes of the devices for the application control, the most important issue is the hashing. Nowadays all the vendors, like Cisco firewalls, are detecting threats with the hashes. 

Symantec has this option that we can block them always by the hashes but the problem is that sometimes Symantec detects these hashes and is not consistent. These two parts should improve. The rest is always awesome. These two parts are very critical because I found a problem in application and device control.

Symantec Endpoint has a perfect agent. It's going to be how many agents you can combine in resources. In the new releases, if they create a single agent to improve the control incrementally, it would be better.

If you want to deploy ATP, you should have a separate event. You have to install separate events. With Symantec Endpoint Protection, any other protection should be installed, then configure the warnings. It does not ask for any new agent to install on the client machine. 

A single agent is enough. Symantec will get a lot of popular support from the industry because people don't like to install agents. For the ATP, you have to install separate events. For the Endpoint, you have to install separate events. If you install all the separate events, it is a huge load on a Windows machine. People start complaining.

If Symantec wants to improve, they should have a single event for all their products, like ATP, DLP, and Endpoint Protection.

I have been using Symantec since 2007. I didn't have any issues regarding even the updates and the migration to the new version. I didn't have any problems, but with the other vendors, I found a lot of problems.

On Windows, this is very fine and perfect, but for the Linux it needs improvement. Whenever I install it on Linux, I found a lot of problems. Even on the Mac as well. 

Kaspersky has Android support as well, but in Symantec, they still don't have support for Android. You should have Mac and Android device support too. 

The Endpoint solution should have support for all types of devices. Symantec has only Windows support (which is the very best), but for the Mac, I found some errors.

It should improve Mac and Android support like Windows device support. The protection of Windows level support is very tight and strong.

The technical support is also very good. Any time that I open a case with them, they have three types of support levels. If I put it on two, immediately they call me, or if nobody is online, there are the chat agents.

You can start and use the chat for support. The support is very good. But Kaspersky has 24-hour support. You cannot stop your business continuity. We can't tell the people they will come online later. Other than this case, Symantec is very good.

The initial setup is straightforward, not complex. For me, it's very easy.

In my personal experience, most people use Symantec. In my whole life, I couldn't find any problems with Symantec. In the ransomware protection, though, I found many issues. 

Many people were having infections but the virus sometimes was not detected. Even the Kaspersky software could not detect it, but if I install Symantec on any client I couldn't find the ransomware. The problem is Symantec is more expensive than other vendors. Kaspersky is in comparison very cheap.

If you are working in an organization and you have 10,000 users, if you compare Symantec with the other vendors you will find only a small difference in the price.

I always tell people if you have a budget, if you have money, if you need stability, go with Symantec. If you think that your data is sensitive, you can not worry about the money.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate Symantec Endpoint Protection a nine.

We have Windows Endpoints and Linux Endpoints, but I believe it is mostly deployed on Windows. We do not have it installed on Linux.

We don't think the features are very valuable because they have limitations.

There are limitations because everyone these days has hybrid working; however, the endpoint does not work for us unless we are connected to a VPN, which is a major limitation. And because it's quite old technology that hasn't been updated, we don't want an on-premises solution; we want a cloud-based solution. We want a cloud-based solution and a market leader.

When I look at the Gartner Quadrant and the Magic Quadrant, it's nowhere near, if not lagging behind. For those reasons, I would not use it.

It was a good product many years ago, but since Broadcom took it over and so on, it has fallen behind.

I have been using Symantec End-User Endpoint Security for over five years.

I don't recall the version, but we are not working with the most recent version.

It's an older version. We are not looking to carry on using Symantec End-User Endpoint Security. We want one of the market leaders, and Symantec is in no way near being the market leader.

It's stable, but this could be due to our surroundings. There is only enough storage to store it. And I believe it is due to us, rather than the product, that we only store a limited amount of data.

Symantec End-User Endpoint Security is scalable.

We have very few people in our company who use this solution because we currently outsource our security operations to Symantec. There will only be three or four people that will be working with this product.

It's used every day, at some point.

I have not personally contacted technical support, but my security team may have.

Broadcom is concentrating on its top 200 customers. I don't think my team is overly impressed with the support they have been getting.

The support needs improvement.

Previously, we had not used any other Endpoint protection products.

I don't remember the installation process because it's been five years since it was done.

I'm sure it will require some endpoint updates.

Because we are still awaiting pricing, I am not sure what the difference is. I have only done the technical comparison; I haven't done the pricing comparison yet.

We are looking at CrowdStrike and Microsoft Defender.

Because we're not in the Top 200 in Symantec, we don't get the traction and escalations, but more importantly, if I look at the market leaders, it's very much Microsoft or CrowdStrike, and Broadcom Symantec is nowhere near the leading endpoint security in Gartner.

We want one that is multi-platform so that we can receive consistent and comprehensive reporting and alerts across all platforms. We're looking for a SaaS-based solution, which means it's all cloud-based and has advanced threat protection, including machine learning for zero-day attacks, as well as the ability to detect vulnerabilities and misconfigurations in real-time. One that's able to do memory scanning for malicious code threat hunting.

I couldn't recommend this solution; instead, I'm going for the market leader, which, is CrowdStrike, followed by Microsoft.

Based on the experience of my colleagues, and not as much my own, I would rate Symantec End-User Endpoint Security a six out of ten.