Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) today announced the global release of its new managed security services offering, better known as Web Security Monitoring, to protect customers and their online presence from security threats.
Grant Geyer, vice-president of managed security services at Symantec, said the new offering is a 24×7 real-time monitoring and analysis tool that helps businesses fix gaps in their security policies and controls, while also helping them to stay compliant with industry regulations.
“Retailers and other corporations often need to have an online presence to transact business on the Web with their customers,” Geyer said. “Hackers are now trying to get stealthily around corporate defenses with malware that extracts confidential information such as social security numbers and credit card information.”
Chris Christiansen, program vice-president, security products and service at IDC, said the new Symantec security service offers users more visibility into their security incidents.
“By including Web threat data into analysis, organizations receive a real-time panoramic view of security incidents via (a) comprehensive correlation of security events and malicious Web event awareness,” Christiansen explained.
Symantec’s Web Security Monitoring solution is a complementary offering to Symantec’s other security services which include, Symantec Web Gateway and Symantec Hosted Web Security, Geyer said.
The service monitors in real-time, a business’ proxy and gateway security devices for connections from hosts within their networks to Web sites that are either suspected to be or are known to contain malicious activity. The service provides users with a summation report of the daily activity that went on, including immediate alerts if a policy violation or compromise occurs.
“In real-time, we monitor the organization’s security technologies and monitor for signs of malicious attacks,” he said. “We do this by comparing every URL that comes to or from the customer’s technologies with our list of known-bad Web sites.”
The Web Security Monitoring service also helps IT gain better visibility into where they may have a gap in end-user security controls. The service also allows businesses to be and stay compliant according to internal policies and industry regulations.
Channel partners can offer their customers consulting, enablement and security advisory services, in addition to products, Geyer said. Web Security Monitoring is another service solution that partners can add to their portfolios that also enables more “stickiness” with their customers, he added.
Symantec’s Web Security Monitoring managed security service is now available through partners worldwide. Pricing for the service is based on a subscription and per-device basis and also depends on the expected device throughput.