Symantec the Black Hole of DLP & Data Protection

The demise of mega security vendor Symantec has been known in the IT industry for years now.

Once one of the biggest names in a slew of platforms, from antivirus to firewalls, is now in a clear state of decline. The tech giant has axed hundreds of jobs and has abandoned tens of thousands of its customers, retaining only the top 2,000 or so of its most profitable clients.

A recent article by acclaimed analyst Richard Stiennon for Forbes pinpoints the decisions that led to Symantec’s downward trend and comprehensively lays out the company’s path to its current state.

Stiennon’s piece is fascinating from a business management perspective. But it also provides some extremely valuable insights into trends in data security and where the industry is heading today.

Symantec goes way back. The company became one of the leaders in IT security even before the internet was even a thing. Back in the 1980’s when a few Stanford graduates started the firm viruses were transferred from machine to machine via floppy disks. As networks became predominant by the early 1990s, malicious software began to invade machines over the wire. The threat of attacks on information and the general vulnerability of data in an internet dominated world was the wave Symantec rode to mega growth.

Since going public and beginning its acquisitions strategy in 1989, Symantec had gone about buying niche security tools and promoting them to the broader market. One of its first was Norton’s PC software company, now a household name in PC security. A decade after entering the antivirus market and recognizing the threat of infiltration, Symantec went into firewalls. In 1999 it bought its first vendor Axent Technologies. That same year Symantec also purchased  L-3 Network Security for vulnerability management. This aggressive acquisition policy continued pretty much successfully for the next fifteen years.

Then, about five years ago, Symantec began its slow and painful decline.

The first major indicator came in 2014 with the company’s demerger from Veritas, a data management and security firm it had bought in one of its largest deals a decade before for a whopping $13 billion. What followed was five years of failed products and underperforming CEOs.

What does the fall of Symantec mean for the IT market?  Abandonment?  You make the call

Well for one, it shows just how much the data security industry had been looking for new replacements for old models. As Stiennon put it, “cybersecurity is driven by innovation [and] channel development”– Symantec was not able to answer those demands.

Also of interest is as he put it: “First, a reseller from Colombia that I was chatting with at the recent RSA Conference in San Francisco informed me that he was there to find a solution to fill a gap created by Symantec abandoning all but its top resellers. Second, another industry veteran told me that Symantec is abandoning all but its most profitable 2,000 customers. That will leave over 100,000 Symantec customers looking for alternatives. “

Stiennon concludes his article with some recommendations to Symantec’s enterprise customers: look for newer, more efficient tools, platforms that can “transform your security architectures while saving money.”

At GTB we think that’s sound advice.

After the acquisition, GTB has seen a steady switch up to its DLP that Works^tm solutions by Symantec Vontu end-users, channel partners, and OEMs.   Our Data Security that Works^tm platform provides administrators exactly the innovation they’ve been looking for, harnessing the power of AI to deliver a powerful yet simplified cybersecurity platform.

GTB’s DLP that Works^tm, is a comprehensive solution, that can be deployed across the entire enterprise. The fully compatible platform can integrate with all aspects of a firm’s data network, from on-premises servers to the cloud.

The AI-powered platform makes protection measures super accurate, identifying threatening activity while at the same time relieving the burden from IT staff in dealing with false negative, false positives, and failed updates.

GTB’s unique approach to data protection hones in on what modern enterprises actually need from a DLP system.

Large changes in the IT market landscape signal that customers are demanding it. GTB’s cutting edge DLP solutions are exactly what the industry has been looking for.