Tag: Symantec

Rubrik appoints Microsoft top cat to board

Posted on December 19, 2022 by - Moving People, News

Insecurity experts Rubrik have  appointed former Microsoft chairman and Symantec CEO John Thompson as its lead independent director.

Thompson brings more than 40 years of leadership experience in the technology industry. His claim to fame is that he succeeded Sir William Gates III as chairman of Microsoft’s board and now serves as its lead independent director.

Previously, Thompson was the chairman and CEO of Symantec and currently serves as the chairman of Illumina’s board.

Rubrik co-founder and CEO, Bipul Sinha said that his outfit had built an elite leadership team of cybersecurity experts across public and private sectors to better equip our customers in the ongoing battle against data threats such as ransomware.

“Thompson is a cybersecurity pioneer. His proven leadership and experience building iconic companies will help us continue to deliver data security innovations and define the future of cybersecurity.”

 

Kaspersky hires Symantec executive Christopher Hurst

Posted on February 23, 2021 by - News

Kaspersky has named former Symantec executive Christopher Hurst as its new general manager for the UK and Ireland region.

Hurst’s has been hired to take a “more aggressive” growth in the cybersecurity vendor’s enterprise business, and develope a stronger presence in the UK channel by recruiting more partners and customers.

Kaspersky  Deputy VP of global sales network Chris Connell, said: “We’re very happy to welcome Chris Hurst to Kaspersky. His vast experience in this sector and demonstrated leadership ability from start-ups to enterprise businesses will bring real value to the business. We are confident that he will help drive strong regional growth in 2021 and beyond, and continue to support and protect our customers from ever-changing and growing cyber-threats.”

Arrow gets pan-European deal for Symantec business

Posted on December 11, 2020 by - News

Arrow has become the first pan-European aggregator partner for Symantec’s Enterprise Security business.

For those who came in late, Symantec was flogged off to Broadcom last year and mightily miffed Symantec’s European distribution partners.

Arrow claims the new deal with Broadcom’s Symantec makes it the vendor’s first commercial pan-European aggregator.

The deal covers the UK, Ireland, Benelux, DACH, France, Italy, Iberia and the Nordics and will see Arrow will provide customer technical support directly for Broadcom’s commercial enterprise clients and support the channel.

Symantec grows despite ditching smaller customers

Posted on September 7, 2020 by - News

After Broadcom acquired Symantec at the end of last year, the security outfit turned its back on a few clients to focus on a handful of large customers.

Several competitors seized the opportunity entice partners to switch allegiance, including NetSkope, Trend Micro, Mimecast and CrowdStrike.

However, Broadcom boss Hock Tan said that Symantec business is growing despite ditching a number of its smaller customers.

Symantec partners looking for replacements

Posted on March 23, 2020 by - News

Symantec Partners is looking for alternatives because  its new owner Broadcom is only interested in a handful of enterprise customers, according to CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz.

On an earnings call, Kurtz said that partners are flooding away from Symantec due to Broadcom’s strategy, claiming that one partner submitted a list of “several thousand” customers that it wants to migrate to a new vendor.

“As Broadcom began integrating Symantec, we saw an increase in enquiries among customers and partners. We believe these dynamics have contributed to an expansion in our pipeline, an acceleration in our overall customer adoption and increased engagement with our partner”, he said.

US firms are at the centre of cybersecurity buy out blitz

Posted on September 12, 2019 by - News

Beancounters at GlobalData have added up some numbers and concluded that American companies remained the most active investors in the cybersecurity technology space.

Of the top five acquirers in terms of the number of acquisitions, the top three were headquartered in the US, with the UK-based Sophos and Canadian firm Blackberry also featuring among the top five.

The three American companies, Symantec, Palo Alto Networks and Proofpoint, undertook seven acquisitions each in the cybersecurity space during 2014–2018, while Sophos acquired six companies and Blackberry acquired five companies during the period.

Symantec has so many wooers

Posted on September 12, 2019 by - News

Security outfit Symantec might be bought out by a pair of private equity (PE) firms seeking to acquire its consumer business for $16.4 billion

London-based Permira Holdings has teamed up with US-based Advent International to offer a deal that would value the company at between $26 and $27 a share – valuing the organisation at $16.4 billion.

The deal would include its Norton antivirus software and VPN service along with its LifeLock identity theft protection services.

Broadcom set to snap up Symantec

Posted on July 4, 2019 by - News

Broadcom is in “advanced talks” to acquire struggling security firm Symantec for $15 billion.

Apparently a deal will be announced in a matter of weeks and Symantec’s share price rose by over 25 percent after reports of Broadcom’s rumoured bid emerged.

The cybersecurity outfit has endured a troubling time of late, with its CEO recently stepping down after reporting disappointing results, being replaced by an interim boss.

Symantec COO quits on “difficult day”

Posted on December 3, 2018 by - News

Symantec COO and president Michael Fey in what he called a “difficult day” on his social media account.

“Today is an exciting and difficult day. As I have chosen to embark on the next stage of my career”,  Fey wrote in a post on his LinkedIn page. “While this was a difficult decision to leave this awesome team, I am very excited about the future.”

As part of Fey’s separation agreement with Symantec signed Wednesday, he has agreed to forgo severance benefits, unvested equity awards, and cash bonus payments.

Ingram’s cloud guy heads to Symantec

Posted on October 29, 2018 by - News

Ingram Micro’s  UK&I director of cloud and software, Apay Obang-Oyway,  is set to leave the company.

Apparently, he is getting ready to join Ingram vendor partner Symantec in a northern European channel role next month.

Matthew Sanderson, Ingram Micro UK&I managing director, said: “Apay will be leaving us to pursue new opportunities, and we thank him for his dedication and hard work over many years. During his tenure, Apay has helped build our highly successful cloud business and leaves us with a market-leading position, along with an experienced and strong team in which we have every confidence that it will continue to take the business forward under new leadership.”

Sanderson added that Scott Murphy, Ingram’s director of cloud and advanced solutions, would now head up a combined enterprise and cloud unit.

“Customers are increasingly turning to the cloud as a strategy for business growth and as our partners look ahead to the next two years. Many see the cloud as beneficial for either growing their business or using it as a strategic asset to react more quickly to market shifts, deliver new products and services faster and get ahead of the competition”, he said.

“Under Scott’s leadership, we will continue to enable our partners to tackle a full range of critical IT issues via the cloud, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and enterprise solutions, with the goal of becoming the number one strategic enterprise distributor.”

NSS Labs sues Symantec, CrowdStrike and ESET

Posted on September 21, 2018 by - News

banner_220x220Cybersecurity testing firm NSS Labs has filed a lawsuit against Symantec, CrowdStrike and ESET, accusing the vendors of failing to reveal flaws in their products.

In the antitrust suit, NSS claims that the vendors have conspired to prevent the independent testing of their products. Antitrust legislation is designed to prevent monopolies on a given market and promote fair competition.

All three vendors are members of the Anti-Malware Testing Standards Organisation (AMTSO), which has a mandate to standardise testing methods. But  NSS CEO Vikram Phatak claims AMTSO members are instead “actively conspiring to prevent independent testing that uncovers product deficiencies to prevent consumers from finding out about them”.

He said: “Further, vendors are openly exerting control and collectively boycotting testing organisations that don’t comply with their AMTSO standards – even going so far as to block the independent purchase and testing of their products. Vendors such as CrowdStrike have conspired to prevent testing of their products by placing clauses in their end-user licensing agreements that make testing of their products subject to their permission. This unethical and deceptive behaviour hampers transparency and hinders consumers in their ability to assess whether a product delivers on its promises.”

NSS Labs said that, in the past, vendors that refused to take part in product testing would see their reputation damaged and sales hit.

With this in mind, vendors have now decided to boycott testing en masse, seeking to protect their reputations as a group, it claimed.

The vendors have not commented, so far.

 

AWS, VMware, Microsoft and Symantec are pants vendors

Posted on February 27, 2018 by - News

hqdefaultAWS, APC, Citrix, Huawei, McAfee, Microsoft, Symantec, Veritas and VMware are lowest-scoring vendors in a channel management survey according to research outfit Canalys.

The Canalys Leadership Matrix was based on more than 2,700 responses from EMEA channel partners who were asked to rate their vendor partners across ten areas of channel management.

Canalys divided the results into four: “Champions”, “Growers”, “Contenders” and “Stragglers”, the survey also judges vendors on how their standing in the Leadership Matrix has changed.

Nine companies were placed in Canalys’ “Stragglers” quadrant, reserved for vendors that “have shown significant weakness in areas of channel management” or “have seen a deterioration in partner relationships, either by choice or mistake”.

AWS, APC, Citrix, Huawei, McAfee, Microsoft, Symantec, Veritas and VMware were all named as channel Stragglers in the survey.

Vole and VMware, two firms which have “highly successful businesses built on sales via partners,” were named and shamed in the report with Canalys saying that there was “a growing wave of channel dissatisfaction with both brands”.

Dell EMC’s appointment as an “official distributor” of VMware licences last year dealt a blow to its resellers and distributors and likely prompted a fall from grace among partners.

Canalys claimed that Microsoft, meanwhile, has been “accused of squeezing channel margins” through its Cloud Solution Provider partner programme.

The top-scoring vendors in the survey included Fujitsu, Cisco, Lenovo, Palo Alto Networks and Veeam. Canalys said that  Cisco’s quality of technical support for partners remains unparalleled when compared with its competitors, while Lenovo’s “Channel 2.0” initiative, which sought to simplify partner incentives, was well received by the channel.

Apple’s  overall rating was still relatively low compared with its peers, and its resellers still suffer from “low margin potential” and “rigid terms and conditions” from the vendor.

 

Kenna Security wants Crompton to spruce up its channel

Posted on October 17, 2017 by - Moving People, News

trevorcromptonCybersecurity outfit Kenna Security has hired Trevor Crompton to build it a shiny new channel of UK sales partners.

Crompton has history with Symantec and RiskIQ.  In RiskIQ he managed to keep 60 resellers, 20 consultants and 10 systems integrators across EMEA happy. Crompton used Obscure Technologies in Africa and Ignition Technologies in the UK.

Crompton has promised the Kenna channel will be 100 percent channel across EMEA. At RiskIQ Crompton he redirected all direct business through resellers.

Market analyst Gartner expects security spending to grow from $28.7 billion across EMEA now to $36.9 billion by 2021. The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will drive 65 percent of those buying decisions as companies desperately try to plug data leaks.

Right now, most security bosses don’t know where to start to defend their businesses and Kenna’s partners can solve this problem by managing the risk. Its system reads vulnerability data, compares it to exploit data and calculates the risk score before create a fix priority list.

 

AV market heading back to the 2000s

Posted on June 13, 2017 by - News

back-to-the-futureIn the 2000s McAfee and Symantec ruled the AV market, and now the latest figures suggest they could be back again.

Symantec and McAfee lost ground in the IT security market when they were outevolved by next-generation technology and more agile start-ups. Now the pair think they are ready to rule again.

They have a long way to climb in 2005, Symantec held the top spot with 32.2 percent of the worldwide security software market by revenue, and McAfee held 12.4 percent at No. 2, with both seeing double-digit year-over-year growth, according to Gartner. Ten years later, Symantec and McAfee still owned the top two spots in the security software, but their share of the market had dropped dramatically.

After three consecutive years of revenue decline, Symantec held 15.2 percent of the worldwide security software market in 2015, while McAfee was at 7.9 percent after a year-over-year revenue dip.

The pair carried out some major restructuring spinouts, acquisitions and senior management changes.

The security market is growing at a rapid pace, expected to hit $202.4 billion by 2021, up from $122.5 billion in 2016, according to research firm MarketsandMarkets.

Symantec and McAfee are returning in force into the market with a platform security strategy and are targeting the core of a company’s security infrastructure.

Both claim single, integrated platform bases with their own broad set of products with those of third-party vendors. They want to drive analytics and automation, while reducing complexity.

They both have a different cunning plan as to what part of the security set-up they want to control.

McAfee is looking to drive focus on what it calls the “threat defence life cycle”, including endpoint, data centre, data protection and cloud security, as well as investments around overarching analytics and automation. The idea is to integrate with the company’s Data Exchange Layer (DXL) offering.

Symantec is looking to own more of the pieces including secure web gateways to email to data loss prevention to multifactor authentication. This will allow customers to choose a single, fully integrated platform, as well as the possibility to integrate with third-party solutions.

Symantec gets its blue coat on

Posted on February 10, 2017 by - News

51Tg15QMqQLSecurity outfit Symantec is nearly ready to roll out its unified partner programme which merges its own channel with that of Blue Coat.

For those who came in late, Symantec bought Blue Coat last year for $4.65 billion and is working out a way of merging the two channels.

Symantec is to launch a Secure One channel programme this Spring and it is pretty simple. There are two areas – core security and enterprise security and four tiers of registered, silver, gold and platinum.

The whole thing is being pitched as a chance for resellers to cross and up-sell.

Partners can boost their margins with opportunity registration on non-standard pricing deals, development funds for gold and platinum partners and the chance to get a performance rebate.

Symantec vice president for global partner sales Torjus Gylstorff said that partners will have the opportunity to cross-sell and up-sell, providing mutual customers with “leading solutions to solve the world’s biggest cyber security problems.”

Other key initiatives include transitioning Opportunity Registration to a front-end discount only, which ensures that the financials of doing business with Symantec will be more predictable.

The firm is going to share more details with partners as it gets closer to launch in April.

“With a $30 billion-dollar opportunity in cyber security, we will see massive growth potential in our industry this year. We’re excited about this new era for our company, our partnership and our program, and we look forward to defining the future of cyber security, together,” he said.