Symantec Parades Information Integrity

Touted as "more than just an antivirus product or firewall," Symantec's Information Integrity initiative represents "a fundamentally new way for businesses to think about information availability and security," said Randy Cochran, vice president of the Americas for Symantec, Cupertino, Calif.

The vendor launched the initiative Tuesday at events in New York, San Francisco, London and Munich, Germany. In New York, Symantec CEO John Thompson was scheduled to speak on "the importance of balancing security risk with business opportunity" and "how Symantec's services and products help organizations analyze risk and plan for growth while protecting their assets and brand," according to Symantec.

Symantec rolled out two new products to support its vision.

First, version 6.1 of Symantec's Enterprise Security Manager policy compliance solution promises to provide businesses with security-related compliance reporting features and preconfigured assessment templates for Sarbanes-Oxley and Gramm-Leach-Bliley requirements, said Cochran.

Second, version 4.0 of Symantec Gateway Security, a bundled appliance designed for remote offices, includes firewall, intrusion prevention, intrusion detection, antivirus policy enforcement, content filtering, VPN and gateway networking functionality, said Cochran.

With the new concept, industry observers said Symantec has sharpened its message concerning the importance of coupling IT and security with the overall business process.

"By framing its message in terms of painful challenges to business and the explicit hazards of anything less than completely accurate or inaccessible information, Symantec frames its message to the enterprise executive C-team, an audience they have not previously addressed in such direct terms," said Richard Ptak, founder of research firm Ptak, Noel and Associates.