Symantec releases new antivirus suite

Symantec is collaborating with IBM to develop antivirus technologies which it claims will protect corporate communities from security threats at all levels, and not just at the front line.

The company said that its Norton Antivirus (Nav) corporate edition 7.5 uses a closed loop automation system, which it claims will reduce the total cost of ownership and virus detection time.

The automation system relies on a technology developed by IBM called digital immune system, which provides 'hands-free' automatic virus and worm detection, curing infected PCs.

"The same network effect that helps viruses spread actually helps us. Its not some kind of magic, its merely automatic," said Chris Miller, Symantec's senior international product manager.

Symantec believes its Norton antivirus extension system is able to offer corporate networks the highest levels of security and rapid response.

Using heuristic technologies known as 'bloodhound', Symantec claims it can detect up to 95 per cent of new strains of macro, executable and boot record viruses.

When Nav detects a suspect file, it places it in local quarantine before sending a copy to the networks central quarantine. If a cure is not already known, the infected file is sent to an immune system gateway, which assesses the seriousness of the threat and then queues it for resolution.

In addition to being able to email suspect files to the gateways, a secure internet access point will have been added, which sends the infection to Symantec without shutting down the mail server. When it reaches Symantec it is dealt with by Symantec Antivirus Response Automation.

When Symantec's systems have developed a cure for the infections, they are then passed back to the gateways, so if another corporation passes the same 'new' threat to the gateway later on, the response is even faster.

Symantec hopes to cut the time from detection to cure to about two hours, so that if something big hits in the US it will not affect Europe. Nav provides multi-platform support and Symantec says it's highly scalable depending on the number of users.

"We're looking at a virtual infrastructure that doesn't rely on peer-to-peer networking which is inherently insecure," said Miller.

Research conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers claims that viruses will cost businesses 9363 years of lost productivity worldwide, and about $1.6tn this year alone.