Symantec
Corp. announced that more than 120 companies have joined forces with Symantec
to drive down the cost and complexity of cyber security, while
improving response times to protect enterprises against sophisticated
threats. This includes major players like AWS, Box, IBM Security,
Microsoft, Oracle, ServiceNow and Splunk, as well as dozens of other
technology innovators, who are now building or delivering more than 250
products and services that integrate with Symantec's Integrated Cyber
Defense (ICD) Platform.
This
unprecedented industry collaboration reflects a "platform shift" in the
cyber security industry, as new research from Enterprise Strategy Group
(ESG) shows enterprise customers are looking to consolidate vendors and
adopt more integrated platforms backed by an open ecosystem.
Integrated
defense improves security by increasing the speed and effectiveness,
while greatly reducing the resources required. To make that shift even
easier, Symantec also today announced important innovations - including a
new universal data exchange, shared management capabilities, and
upgraded data loss prevention software that help customers stop
untrusted apps before they compromise confidential data. All are built
on Symantec's ICD Platform, which provides a unified framework for
information protection, threat protection, identity management and
compliance across endpoints, networks, applications, and clouds.
"There's
a seismic shift happening in cyber security," said Art Gilliland, EVP
and GM Enterprise Products, Symantec. "The old way of fighting
cyber-attacks using fragmented tools has become too complex and
expensive to manage. Integrated platforms are the future. We're proud to
be leading this platform shift with a clear vision and winning
portfolio - along with hundreds of partners and thousands of experts
working every day on the front lines to protect our customers. We are
completely convinced that our best defense going forward is an
integrated defense."
New Research Demonstrates the Need for Integrated Platforms
ESG recently published new customer research showcasing
how the lack of a cohesive security technology strategy creates real
problems for enterprises, leading customers to seek more integrated
platforms and fewer, more strategic vendors. Key findings based on the
research include:
- More
than 80 percent of C-level executives said threat detection and
response effectiveness is impacted by too many independent point tools;
- 53 percent of organizations have a problematic shortage of cyber security staff and skills; and
- 91
percent of enterprises are actively consolidating or considering
consolidating the cyber security vendors with whom they conduct business.
"Almost
two-thirds of large enterprises surveyed use at least 25 different
cyber security products. For security operations centers, managing
disparate tools can be ineffective, costly, and time consuming,
especially considering the shortage of cyber security skills," said Jon
Oltsik, senior principal analyst and fellow, ESG. "This explains why
CISOs are looking to consolidate and integrate their security
infrastructure with platforms and open architectures that provide
advanced developer support and deliver a partner ecosystem with robust
third-party integrations."
Symantec Integrates Products, Services and Partners
Symantec
started building ICD two and a half years ago with its acquisition of
Blue Coat Systems, which added best-of-breed web and cloud security
technologies to Symantec's market-leading endpoint, email and data loss
prevention (DLP) technologies. At the time, Symantec saw and heard that
customers were spending enormous time and resources to integrate point
technologies in order to derive real value from their cyber security
investments. So, the company invested in a strategy and roadmap to
deliver an integrated platform that significantly reduces cost of
operations while improving the speed and accuracy of prevention,
detection and response in order to reduce risk.
Since then, Symantec has:
- Invested
significant R&D effort to integrate its products around key
customer pain points - protecting information in SaaS applications;
integrating complementary technologies like cloud access security broker
(CASB) and DLP; enhancing endpoint security with advanced endpoint
detection and response (EDR) to protect against targeted attacks; and
securing infrastructure from endpoint to cloud for "Zero Trust" security
implementations.
- Acquired
innovative security technologies like Fireglass, Skycure, Appthority,
Javelin, and Luminate to address emerging challenges - and quickly
integrated them into the Symantec portfolio.
- Deepened
its services portfolio to provide security leaders with in-depth
expertise in global threat intelligence, advanced threat
monitoring, cyber readiness, and incident response.
- Opened
its APIs and launched a Technology Integration Partner Program (TIPP)
to do deeper integration work with key technology players.
ICD Platform Earns Broad Ecosystem Support
Symantec
now has more than 120 partners in TIPP, who are building or delivering
more than 250 new applications and services that integrate with
Symantec's ICD Platform, so enterprise customers can reduce the cost and
complexity of their security operations. In addition, Symantec is now
launching a new "Innovation Playground" program within TIPP to simplify
integration with startups. The new program will enable startup teams to
leverage Symantec APIs and gain access to products, engineering
resources, and customer innovation days.
"In
order to reduce security operations complexity and fight today's
increasingly sophisticated adversary, organizations need products that
work as a platform instead of an army of point products working in
silos," said Oliver Friedrichs, VP of security automation and
orchestration at Splunk. "Splunk's support for the ICD Platform provides
our joint customers with consolidated views across their security
infrastructure, including incidents flowing from endpoint, web, network
and email security solutions."
"At
Box, security is a top priority and we are dedicated to providing our
customers with powerful controls to protect their sensitive content,"
said Niall Wall, senior vice president of partners at Box. "Symantec is a
founding member of the Box Trust Ecosystem. We are excited about
Symantec's Integrated Cyber Defense and how it will help
our mutual customers reduce risk of data loss, detect advanced
threats, and seamlessly bring together our security capabilities."
"Security
analysts today deal with increasingly complex threats, fragmented
security tools, and siloed organizations," said Rich Telljohann,
director of business development at IBM Security. "To combat this we are
seeing that the cyber security landscape is demanding a shift to
integrated platforms in order to reduce complexity and cost. We have
built an integration using Symantec ICD Exchange, so the IBM Resilient
Incident Response Platform can provide intelligent orchestration,
automation, and enrichment of incidents triggered by Symantec ICD,
allowing analysts to respond intelligently to threats."
ICD Platform Drives Customer Adoption and Value
As
evidenced by Symantec's recent quarterly earnings, more and more
customers are moving beyond individual products to adopt the ICD
platform and portfolio. For example:
- In
Europe, a household appliance manufacturer signed an eight-figure deal
with Symantec, adopting a substantial footprint of the ICD platform;
- In
Asia Pacific, a major securities and derivatives trading exchange
expanded beyond Symantec endpoint security to adopt Symantec's cloud
security stack; and
- In
the U.S., a global Fortune 500 power company - originally a single
product customer - signed a seven-figure, multi-product, multi-service
deal to build an internal security operations center.
"The
threat landscape we all face is not static and is constantly on the
move, as are our customers and employees, so strategies to deal with
that kind of environment are very complex," said Emily Heath, vice
president and chief information security officer, United Airlines.
"Visibility of your environment and integration of solutions are a key
part of that strategy. For example, if one security control catches
something, it is much more efficient for us if those controls are
integrated and can communicate seamlessly with each other to help with
real time detection. Additionally, if security providers take the time
to integrate across the stack so we don't have to, that results in an
even better outcome."
Symantec Extends ICD Platform with New Features & Functions
Symantec
is introducing three new technology innovations today that extend ICD
for shared intelligence and shared management across multiple technology
components, as well as new "threat aware" data protection capabilities:
- ICD Exchange:
A universal data exchange that shares events, intelligence and actions
across Symantec and third-party systems, improving visibility for
security teams and security operations centers, so they can take faster
action and increase automation.
- ICD Manager:
Shared management capabilities that will provide customers with unified
visibility into threats, policies and incidents, helping them to reduce
incident response times from days to minutes.
- Data Loss Prevention 15.5:
New data loss prevention (DLP) software that integrates with Symantec's
market-leading endpoint protection suite to help customers stop
untrusted apps before they compromise confidential data. This "threat
aware" data protection is one of many breakthroughs made possible due to
Symantec's ICD platform investments.