Symantec focuses on developing security solutions that are designed horizontally but can be applied vertically
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — August 23, 2016 — Based on its recent analysis of the embedded security for the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) market, Frost & Sullivan recognizes Symantec Corporation with the 2016 North America Frost & Sullivan Award for Customer Value Leadership. Symantec’s customer-centric approach and partnerships with manufacturers across industries such as automotive, industrial control systems (ICS), and semiconductors have helped it equip customers with a centralized and unified incident management tool. Symantec’s IoT solutions seamlessly secure customer endpoints, proactively block out threats across endpoints, and prioritize incidents. These solutions not only cater to new IIoT technologies, but also legacy systems.
Symantec’s ‘Secure by Design’ approach involves embedding operational technology (OT) security into customers’ devices and delivering authentication solutions and analytic capabilities to manage and control security systems. Significantly, Symantec detects more threats with its cross-control point visibility and remediation capabilities than its peer solutions.
Symantec’s IIoT security solutions include:
- Embedded Critical System Protection: This solution consists of a host firewall, configuration control, file integrity monitoring, intrusion detection, operating system hardening, application whitelisting, and automatic sandboxing. It offers granular-level control and protection against zero day attacks. Additionally, the embedded solution can identify intruder activity, policy violations, and changes to files in real time.
- Device Certificate: It provides identity and authentication of hardware devices to prevent unauthorized access. The solution is based on public key infrastructure (PKI), which enables it to protect distributed hardware devices.
- Code Signing: It allows users to confirm that the code running on the device has been authorized by them and not replaced by an attacker or an unauthorized third party.
- Anomaly Detection for Automotive: It monitors all Controller Area Network (CAN) bus traffic without disrupting vehicle operations, learns what normal behavior is and flags anomalous activity that may indicate an attack. This solution is lightweight enough to sit within the car itself. Symantec has the capability to extend such a technology to other IoT verticals.
“Symantec’s IoT solutions contain a forensics and remediation capability that help customers manage their logs and create remediation policies. Furthermore, customers are able to extend security to on-premise, cloud, and virtualized environments,” said Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Sivakumar Narayanaswamy. “Symantec focuses on understanding each industry’s ecosystem and sales and engineering cycles to tailor solutions to its security requirements.”
In 2015, Symantec’s intrusion prevention solution across different endpoints was able to block more than 700 million attempts by malware to conduct command and control (C&C) activity or other malicious activity. Its DeepSight™ Intelligence threat intelligence platform collects, verifies, and analyzes the data to ensure accurate and timely information is made available to customers. This solution delivers comprehensive vulnerability coverage for more than 19,000 vendors across 60,000 technologies.
Another important solution from Symantec, Embedded Security: Critical Systems Protection (SES:CSP), supports host-based intrusion prevention and detection and controls application behavior by whitelisting or sandboxing them. It aids policy-based behavior detection and control for hosts/devices, making it highly valuable in the ICS ecosystem where signatures and patches are not always updated.
“Symantec boasts one of the largest, unclassified, non-government security intelligence networks. It monitors, analyzes, and processes more than 10 trillion security events in a year,” noted Narayanaswamy. “There are approximately 1.3 billion IoT devices that currently embed Symantec Device Certificates for authentication purposes.”
Overall, Symantec’s solutions can cater to the growing and dynamic requirements of its customers. Leveraging its experience and expert teams, Symantec is able to protect applications and devices, authenticate systems, offer visibility into existing and future security concerns, and manage the overall security posture of the company.
Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has demonstrated excellence in implementing strategies that proactively create value for its customers with a focus on enhancing the return on the investment that customers make in its services or products. The award recognises the company’s inordinate focus on enhancing the value that its customers receive, beyond simply good customer service, leading to improved customer retention and ultimately customer base expansion.
Frost & Sullivan Best Practices awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research to identify best practices in the industry.
