...or things that we could acquire, and when we kind of stepped away from it and did the customer validation side, what customers said was, look, we already have something, we haven't fully deployed it, we haven't deployed it because the management of the key infrastructure around identities is so complex, and so we don't need help there at all.
Yet when you go and you ask consumers "What are you worried about?", they're worried about phishing, identity theft, online fraud — all things that are undermining their confidence in doing more and more online. So we think there's a place where we can make a difference.
At the Demo conference recently you showed off an early version of a product called Norton Identity Manager. What is the purpose of that product?
The Norton Identity Client is focused on the idea of helping a consumer have, let's say, single-use credit card numbers, where they can go to an online site, facilitate a transaction, but not have to worry about having their credentials visible to the world at large. It's a one-time use phenomenon. Or being able to validate a site as being a legitimate site, knowing that the bank or the e-tailer that I'm interacting with is who I thought I was interacting with.
When I read some of the description of Norton Identity Manager it also made me think of Microsoft Passport. You suggest people use their Norton accounts to pay for online shopping, for example. Passport failed; is Norton Identity Manager different?
Well, there may be some techniques and technologies that are similar, but I think there are two fundamental things that are different. One, it's a different moment in time. When Microsoft attempted Passport, the market wasn't quite ready for that. People didn't perceive that there was a problem that needed to be solved by Microsoft.
Two, and perhaps more important, they didn't trust the company that wanted to offer the solution. So technology without trust is going to flounder, and that's what essentially happened with Passport.
You just ended a disappointing quarter, yet your consumer business appears to be very strong. How come that's going so well?
We've always had a view that it's always difficult to compete with Microsoft's marketing. It's much easier to compete with their products, and I think that's reflected in the performance of Norton Internet Security in the marketplace right now. It's a terrific product and it's overtaking Microsoft around the world, as well as others in the industry.
You've mentioned Microsoft as one of the big guns and you've also said Oracle, IBM, EMC and Cisco have all woken up to the reality that security is an essential element of today's business. Do you have any fear that any of these big guys are going to take your business?
Fear? We are fearless at Symantec! The notion that somebody who doesn't have the same experience that we have, that doesn't have the same human capital invested in the security world that we do, doesn't have the strength of its relationship with customers and partners around the world, or doesn't have the technology portfolio that we do, can come in and take this away from us — I don't think that's the case, and therefore there's no reason for us to be fearful of anyone. If anything, we need to sharpen our own execution to make sure that our missteps don't create openings or opportunities for competitors that we created as opposed to they created.
Talkback
Symantec's comments are hardly surprising seeing as the latest 2007 edition of it's security suite is considered "not compatible with visita" I have it installed on Vista and it works but some features are disabled by Vista and Vista suggests removing it.
To make things worse main rival McAfee does work with Vista.
hmm I wonder why John Thompson doesn't have Vista installed? Could it be he doesn't want to have to install McAfee instead of Norton?
Interesting to see if his viewpoints change when Norton release fully Vista compatible edition
The comments are bound to be biased not simply due to the fact that their software is not yet fully compatible with Vista but also because Microsoft is a competitor to Symantec in the security arena. However, I do think John Thompson makes some good points about consumer's requiring efficacy that comes with using products supplied by companies whose core business is information security. If security was as core to its business as it is to the likes of Trend, McAfee, Symantec etc, then we would have seen Windows 200/XP/Vista SE (meaning Secure Edition) where the billions of dollars would have been spent developing hardened operating systems rather than fancy GUIs. The Wow starts now, security comes later ... we hope.
Good point. Sometimes it's hard to listen to what is actually been said when you know it is coming from a non-objective source.
However, saying that I still think user awareness and training is needed rather than more resource hogging security apps. Do you know what antivirus software hackers and virus writers use? None. The ones that I have read about anyway. They just know not to download that email attachment called "I love you" or open websites promising free ipods or the latest copy of photoshop for nothing.
Don't get me wrong you still need firewall protection etc. but In the last year since I have my hardware firewall build into my router I have had 0 intrution attempts and 0 viruses detected by my copy of Norton. How necessary is it? Not very but I keep it out of fear.
I think having these apps makes people lazy and they don't bother to become net savvy enough to avoid viruses and spyware in the first place. That is why Phising was so successful to begin with because anti-virus couldn't protect people from it and not being net savvy or having common sense users readily entered their bank login or even credit card details into fake websites making it easy for the criminals.