The Symantec Endpoint Management Suite offers medium-sized and large businesses an integrated set of tools to manage their endpoints. System configuration, patch management and security are endpoint issues that IT departments are typically faced with, said Symantec Corp.’s senior director of product marketing, Kevin Murray.
Based on the Open Collaborative Architecture (a client management platform acquired through the purchase of Lindon, Utah-based IT management software vendor Altiris Inc. last year, and upon which Symantec has standardized its individual products) provides a single-vendor approach.
The suite consolidates endpoint security technology so customers don’t have to manage multiple agents like antivirus, antispyware and intrusion prevention, said Murray. “One of the key identity problems is the threat landscape is so diverse and there’s so much going on out there, that customers have to stack technologies to be adequately protected,” he said.
The data protection element of the suite is actually a combination of backup and system recovery. With common configuration tasks like updating the operating system, IT administrators can set backup policies while ensuring the recovery point in the event of a system failure, said Murray. But security and data protection aside, the suite offers endpoint lifecycle management “at a very deep level”, said Murray. Whether it’s a client or server, the suite discovers and inventories endpoints to allow IT admins to stay abreast of hardware configuration, software applications, asset inventory, and patch management.