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A Bad Week for Symantec
Evan Hughes writes "NeoSmart Technologies has published a scathing editorial regarding 3 high-profile mistakes by Symantec Corp. — all in less than a week. In what seems to be a string of stupid mistakes culminating in the infection of CNN-parent Turner Broadcasting Systems by Rinbot— a virus dedicated to the eradication of Symantec from the known world."
Every experience I have ever had with a Symantec product has been utterly terrible. Generally they cause more problems than they solve.
"Effectively free" is still overpriced as far as I am concerned. The amount it slows the system down is unforgivable.
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People often don't update their software for years at a time. Hey, it costs. Which is why NAV is designed to update itself automatically. You just have to configure it correctly.
I'm no fan of Symantec. It's perfectly true that they're badly run. Hey, they used to be a lot more than a "security software" company, but all their other business (natural language databases, compilers, IDEs, desktop software, backup software) just died on them. But to blame them for the ineptitude of the CNN's IT department is idiotic.
Seconded. The only time I get reboots is when it's required for a security patch, or the occasional "application freaking the #$@%^& out" kinda thing...servers, workstations, all of 'em. And if it weren't for that, I'd be pushing 90-120 day uptimes on most of my machines. Yes, Windows machines.
In fact, I'll get you the data.
Main server has rebooted twice in the last four months for security patches, total ~19 minutes downtime.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
yes, its close to zero cost when you buy the software in store, but its still subscription based, which is where they get you - its like a subsidized cell phone from a major carrier - sure, the phone is zero cost or 50 bucks off, but you've still got to pay for airtime minutes...
My point is this: the corporate version of Symantec does not automatically install any download rules. They leave this up to the installer who is hopefully capable of properly configuring their update rules and/or updating their servers manually, most likely so that they can properly test the latest virus definitions for errors or anomalies before pushing them in to production. See the comment below that links to the article about Excel being treated as a virus.
I work for... well, it doesn't matter. In our facility absolutely NO patches or virus definition updates are applied without first being approved by another group whose sole job it is to make sure these pathces don't affect something critical to our operations. Furthermore, we only download our defs from approved (IE our own) sources so as to ensure that we are ONLY downloading what's already been tested.
In short, we are all professionals and we should be capable of ensuring that our defs are up to date. We don't need (nor will we allow them to in our case) Symantec to hold our fuckin' hands throughout this process. When I install a corporate virus scanner, I fully expect to have to configure the machine policies in order to match our IT policies. If somebody's only updating their definitions once a week, then that's not Symantec's fault. That's the fault of whatever sysadmin was too stupid to properly configure his software.
That said, I still think Symantec's a piece of shit and I wish we were allowed to use other solutions in its place, but that's not for me to decide. Their management software is no where near as feature rich as EPO, and I seem to have to spend more time dealing with Symantec issues than I do with EPO issues. (Because, yes, we do monitor our machines each day to ensure that they are updating properly. CNN we are not.) Please don't think for a minute that I like defending Symantec. I just believe in placing the blame properly where it belongs, and in this case it's the idiot sysadmins who weren't doing their job.
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.