Symantec unveils Endpoint Protection 12

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Symantec has unveiled its latest endpoint protection software, designed to help firms deal with the explosion in malware.

In 2010 alone, hackers sent out more than 286 million unique pieces of malware, representing an average of more than nine new threats every second, Symantec said.

The updated versions of Symantec Endpoint Protection and Symantec Endpoint Protection Small Business Edition, both currently in beta, use the security giant’s cloud based reputation technology Insight, previously known as Ubiquity.

Insight contains security ratings for more than 2.5 billion unique software files. This means the database has ratings for almost every software file in existence today, according to Symantec.

The products also come with SONAR 3, a hybrid behaviour and reputation engine, which forms a profile of a threat based on those two attributes and is designed to block zero-day and targeted threats.

Furthermore, the new endpoint products have been created with virtualised environments in mind, making the agent intelligent so it can detect when it is installed on virtual machines (VMs) and report back to the management console.

“Therefore the administrator can create policies that are appropriate to virtual environments,” Mike Jones, Symantec's principal product marketing manager, told IT PRO.

“That would mean, for example, a set of VMs that share a host, the load can effectively be balanced across them so that you don’t get what is often called an AV storm of concurrent scans on the same system, bogging it down.”

Endpoint Protection 12 technologies can detect which key components across VMs do not need to be scanned, further lightening the workload.

“Previously, all intelligence had to be in the knowledge of the administrator, now we provide that to them,” Jones added.

Businesses will have to wait to get their hands on Symantec Endpoint Protection 12 packages, which are only available in beta form through invite only. The public beta is expected to be available from April.

The products will be officially launched later in the year, but no specific date or quarter was given.

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