4 ms·

So what's the difference between 'enterprise security' and 'consumer security' products? I work for a (partial) competitor and I can't really imagine splitting

So what's the difference between 'enterprise security' and 'consumer security' products? I work for a (partial) competitor and I can't really imagine splitting our company into consumer and enterprise versions. Exploits are exploits, no matter if the target is a Windows XP in an AD domain, or a Windows 10 video game box in a home. A lot of threat analysis/discover infrastructures need to be duplicated, let alone the analysts and reverse engineering engineers.

otoburb 7y ago
Enterprises may have custom requirements or interfaces that consumers don’t care about. Makes sense to split if the firm expects to support both markets at the same time. Quite tough to pull off.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
hadlock 7y ago
Enterprise security is typically B2B with annual contracts in the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars; most any company dealing with any kind of PII requires every employee workstation/laptop to have a security product installed with periodic scans, often daily, and then an audit trail a mile long. Vs. consumer security, I am guessing, Windows has a built in virus scanner now that's pretty good, and also free; LifeLock is a sort of credit freeze/identity theft monitoring service... a product marketed directly to consumers, but also as a pack-in offering that credit card companies are starting to offer to customers for free, especially as part of settlements due to personal information breach legal settlements. Different market/scope.
level3 7y ago
My company isn't "enterprise" size, but we have over 100 machines in the office so it makes sense to buy a business product rather than a consumer product. I agree that the detection/protection portion of the product can easily be the same between "enterprise" and "security," but the real value (at least for us) is on the management side. Some features that I've found valuable as an admin: - Consolidated billing, suited to the company's normal billing cycle -Easy automated deployment (e.g. GPO deployment) - Management console to monitor the status of all devices - Multiple admin accounts for delegation - Timely alerts by email to specified admins - Granular security policies - Security policies by device group (i.e. different port exceptions for user workstations vs servers) - Ability to push virus definitions / policy changes to specific devices if necessary There are a few other possibly useful features we're not using with our current setup (such as specifying an internal update server).
kube-system 7y ago
Threat analysis is an important, but it's really a small part of Symantec's operations as a whole. (and that tech can be relatively easily licensed and/or purchased) Sales, marketing, strategy, partnerships, product development, support, legal and compliance -- much of the rest of the company, will be vastly different for B2B vs B2C.

otoburb 7y ago

Enterprises may have custom requirements or interfaces that consumers don’t care about. Makes sense to split if the firm expects to support both markets at the same time. Quite tough to pull off.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

hadlock 7y ago

Enterprise security is typically B2B with annual contracts in the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars; most any company dealing with any kind of PII requires every employee workstation/laptop to have a security product installed with periodic scans, often daily, and then an audit trail a mile long. Vs. consumer security, I am guessing, Windows has a built in virus scanner now that's pretty good, and also free; LifeLock is a sort of credit freeze/identity theft monitoring service... a product marketed directly to consumers, but also as a pack-in offering that credit card companies are starting to offer to customers for free, especially as part of settlements due to personal information breach legal settlements. Different market/scope.

level3 7y ago

My company isn't "enterprise" size, but we have over 100 machines in the office so it makes sense to buy a business product rather than a consumer product. I agree that the detection/protection portion of the product can easily be the same between "enterprise" and "security," but the real value (at least for us) is on the management side. Some features that I've found valuable as an admin: - Consolidated billing, suited to the company's normal billing cycle -Easy automated deployment (e.g. GPO deployment) - Management console to monitor the status of all devices - Multiple admin accounts for delegation - Timely alerts by email to specified admins - Granular security policies - Security policies by device group (i.e. different port exceptions for user workstations vs servers) - Ability to push virus definitions / policy changes to specific devices if necessary There are a few other possibly useful features we're not using with our current setup (such as specifying an internal update server).

kube-system 7y ago

Threat analysis is an important, but it's really a small part of Symantec's operations as a whole. (and that tech can be relatively easily licensed and/or purchased) Sales, marketing, strategy, partnerships, product development, support, legal and compliance -- much of the rest of the company, will be vastly different for B2B vs B2C.