Symantec Announces Integrated Antispam, Antivirus and Content Filtering Solution for SMTP Gateways

Symantec Mail Security for SMTP 5.0 Protects Against Risk of E-mail Threats and Spam

CUPERTINO, Calif. – April 17, 2006 – Symantec Corp. (NASDAQ: SYMC) today announced it is raising the bar for enterprise e-mail security protection by delivering the industry’s first integrated best-of-breed antispam, antivirus and content filtering protection in a single software solution for SMTP gateways -- Symantec Mail Security for SMTP 5.0. The combination of technologies proactively protects against inbound and outbound e-mail threats at the earliest point of network entry -- the Internet e-mail (SMTP) gateway. Scheduled to be available in May, Symantec Mail Security for SMTP 5.0 is the final integration of Brightmail and Symantec technologies into a single, unified solution, and is a key component of Symantec Enterprise Messaging Management solution portfolio.

"Today’s enterprises rely heavily on e-mail for both internal and external business communication" said Brian Burke, Research Manager, IDC’s Security Products. "To protect against malicious code, phishing attacks, viruses, spam and other unwanted e-mail, organizations require a comprehensive solution that provides layers of protection to stop inbound and outbound e-mail threats from impacting organizations and compromising security"

E-mail has become a primary communications tool for companies and government agencies around the world, and with its growth comes the increased risk of threats. According to IDC, 80 percent of viruses enter through the e-mail gateway. In addition, the most recent Symantec Internet Security Threat Report (March 7, 2006) cites that phishing attempts made up one in every 119 e-mail messages processed, which constituted an average of 7.92 million phishing attempts detected per day in the second half of 2005 -- a 39 percent increase over the first half of 2005. The report also states that Symantec’s antifraud filters -- a key technology included in Symantec Mail Security for SMTP 5.0 -- blocked more than 1.5 billion phishing attempts during this period.

Customers are also looking for consolidation of technologies into a single solution for e-mail gateways. "Today’s enterprises prefer the convenience of a strong, integrated e-mail security solution from a single trusted vendor" said Rick Caccia, senior director of product management for Symantec Messaging and Web Security. "Symantec Mail Security for SMTP offers the industry’s best technologies in threat protection, antispam, and content filtering to significantly reduce the risk of threats to the network posed by email-based threats, and to control the flow of unauthorized or inappropriate content in e-mail both internally and externally"

"As a private education institute, we must prevent e-mail threats from compromising the security of our student and staff information, while ensuring that the school is able to operate efficiently" said Nathan Pilgrim, IT Manager for Brisbane Girls Grammar School, a private institution based in Brisbane, Australia, with more than 1150 students and 175 staff. "Symantec Mail Security for SMTP helps us protect against malicious code, phishing attacks, viruses and spam with virtually no false positives, ensuring the online safety of our students and maximizing the efficiency of our network"

Building on the integration of Symantec Mail Security for SMTP, Symantec Brightmail AntiSpam, and key features from Symantec Mail Security 8200 Series, Symantec Mail Security for SMTP 5.0 provides one of the strongest barriers against malicious code, phishing attempts, and spyware and adware. New day-zero virus prevention draws on the breadth and reach of Symantec’s Probe Network, identifying suspicious attachments that exhibit the qualities of viruses and mass-mailing worms and rerouting them to the new Suspect Virus Quarantine, where they are held until definitions are available. Administrators also have the option of deleting the message, stripping the attachment, generating a notification or performing other actions on a per-recipient basis. In addition, the solution mitigates emerging threats such as phishing and spyware with anti-phishing defenses using Sender Policy Framework and Sender ID, and the inclusion of spyware and adware in dispositions for virus policies combats the increasing threat of such programs using links in e-mail to facilitate installation.

Powerful new content filtering capabilities simplify the enforcement of corporate usage policies, as well as compliance with legal and regulatory requirements. Administrators can conduct regular expression and keyword scanning of more than 200 recognized attachment types, including ZIP files, executables, processing, spreadsheet and presentation file formats. Symantec Mail Security for SMTP 5.0 also automatically determines the true file type of an attachment through direct physical inspection rather than by extension or MIME type, which prevents malicious senders from attempting to bypass attachment filters with the renaming of a malicious attachment extension to a more commonly used extension (for example, changing the file from .exe to .doc).

With its award-winning Symantec Brightmail AntiSpam technology, Symantec Mail Security for SMTP 5.0 provides enterprises with a multi-layered spam defense that employs more than 20 filtering technologies, including spam signatures, heuristics, reputation filters, language identification and proprietary methods, with automatic updates occurring within every 10 minutes. The technology also enables organizations to achieve high detection rates of 95 percent and 99.9999 percent accuracy rates against false positives, allowing companies to safely delete spam without review.

In addition, new graphical message auditing allows administrators to perform advanced tracking across multiple scanners in their network. E-mail messages can be searched by subject, date and time range, envelope sender/recipient, disposition, next hop IP, and more. The message tracking feature also provides an instant summary of the action performed on the message and for more detailed information, administrators can easily drill down to see a comprehensive, organized view of messages’ flow through the system.

To ensure the most up-to-date protection and reduce total cost of ownership, Symantec Mail Security for SMTP 5.0 is supported by Symantec Security Response, the world’s leading Internet security research and support organization, leverages sophisticated threat and early warning systems to provide customers with comprehensive, global, 24x7 Internet security expertise to proactively guard against today’s blended Internet threats.

For organizations securing heterogeneous environments, Symantec Mail Security for SMTP 5.0 provides support for a broad range of operating system platforms, including Microsoft Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2003, Sun Solaris 9 and 10, and Red Hat Linux ES/AS 3.0.

Symantec Enterprise Messaging Management
Symantec is the first company to deliver complete, end-to-end Enterprise Messaging Management capabilities, keeping messaging systems and data both secure and readily available. Symantec Enterprise Messaging Management provides industry-leading products and services designed to help eliminate unnecessary costs by reducing large volumes of unwanted spam, stopping viruses and worms, automatically managing the lifecycle of older messages through archiving, and by helping to keep customers’ communications infrastructures resilient against failure.

Availability
Symantec Mail Security for SMTP 5.0 is scheduled to be available in May through Symantec’s worldwide network of value-added authorized resellers, distributors and systems integrators. Organizations can be connected with Symantec’s resellers and distributors in their areas by visiting the Symantec Solution Provider locator at http://enterprisesecurity.symantec.com.

Symantec Mail Security for SMTP 5.0 is also part of the Symantec Mail Security Enterprise Edition bundle, which offers customers the flexibility to choose from various deployment options, including appliances, software or hosted services for comprehensive protection of their e-mail infrastructure. The Symantec Mail Security Enterprise Edition bundle includes several deployment options to protect the SMTP gateway -- the primary entry point for Internet-borne threats -- with the Symantec Mail Security 8200 Series appliance, Symantec Mail Security for SMTP 5.0 software and Symantec Hosted Mail Security. In addition, to protect e-mail on internal mail servers from threats and inappropriate e-mail content, Symantec Mail Security for Microsoft Exchange and Symantec Mail Security for Domino ensure tight integration for real-time, on-demand and scheduled scans of the message store.

About Symantec
Symantec is the world leader in providing solutions to help individuals and enterprises assure the security, availability, and integrity of their information. Headquartered in Cupertino, Calif., Symantec has operations in more than 40 countries. More information is available at www.symantec.com.

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Contact Information

Candice Garmoe

Enterprise Security

Symantec Corp.

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