Symantec Earns 35th Consecutive VB100 Award

Symantec Earns Unprecedented 35th Consecutive VB100 Award

Security vendors and testing organisations also collaborate to devise new testing guidelines for today’s behaviour-based security solutions

AUCKLAND – December 21, 2007 – Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) today announced it has earned an unprecedented 35th consecutive VB100 Award from Virus Bulletin. While many other security vendors failed the December 2007 tests, Symantec was one of only two vendors to receive a perfect detection score for all test sets, including ‘in the wild’ malware, and today’s more complex threats such as file infectors, worms and bots, as well as DOS, macro and polymorphic viruses.

The core technology tested powers in both Symantec’s Norton product line for consumers and enterprise products. The Norton line of award-winning consumer products, including Norton 360, Norton Internet Security, Norton AntiVirus and Norton SystemWorks, is a market leader in desktop protection solutions providing consumers with the information they need to help effectively secure their systems from online threats now and in the future. Additionally for business customers, Symantec Endpoint Protection integrates Symantec AntiVirus with advanced threat prevention in a single agent, delivering an unmatched defence against malware for laptops, desktops and servers.

Symantec has earned 41 VB100 Awards since 1998. To earn the VB100 designation, a product must detect — both on demand and on access, and in its default settings — all malware known to be ‘in the wild’ at the time of the review and generate no false positives when scanning a set of clean files. These criteria reflect a current and real-life snapshot of how programs handle existing threats. The fact that false positives are also factored into the testing is an important aspect of the user experience.

“In a test in which many other products struggled, Symantec’s detection was excellent, with no samples missed and no false positives generated,” said John Hawes of Virus Bulletin. “We commend vendors such as Symantec whose products earned the VB100.”

“It is gratifying to see the effectiveness of Symantec solutions continue to be acknowledged by well-established organisations such as Virus Bulletin,” said Kevin Haley, director of product management, Symantec Security Response. “As security testing methods and technologies evolve and advance, Symantec looks forward to taking part in new opportunities that help ensure that consumers have the most comprehensive information with which to compare security products.”

Virus Bulletin’s signature-based tests have long been considered the benchmark for gauging the quality of antivirus solutions in detecting a vast range of known viruses. There is a growing need, however, for behavioural-based tests as well. Such tests are imperative in assessing modern behaviour-based systems, which detect malicious activity as it occurs, and they offer a more complete evaluation of the various ways an antivirus product can provide protection.
Consequently, Virus Bulletin and Symantec are also participants in the Anti-Malware Testing Working Group, a group of security vendors and software testing organisations committed to developing new guidelines for behavioural tests of security software. According to the Anti-Malware Testing Working Group, use of such new guidelines is intended to be voluntary, and testing guidelines are estimated to be available by early next year.

About Symantec

Symantec is a global leader in infrastructure software, enabling businesses and consumers to have confidence in a connected world. The company helps customers protect their infrastructure, information and interactions by delivering software and services that address risks to security, availability, compliance and performance. Headquartered in Cupertino, California, Symantec has operations in more than 40 countries. More information is available at www.symantec.com

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