news The Tasmanian Department of Education has zeroed in on the latest version of Symantec’s Endpoint Protection systems to secure the 40,000 personal computers and 700 servers being used by the department’s staff, schools, colleges, libraries and online access centres.
Computer users worldwide are being targeted by malicious software that comprises viruses, worms, Trojans, spyware, botnets, rootkits, and adware. Users stand to lose not just data but they very often fall victim to identity and financial theft. The new anti-virus system will guard multiple devices such as laptops, personal computers, and mobile devices that store confidential staff and student information.
The Tasmanian Department of Education’s computer systems at 350 locations were running the older version of Symantech’s Endpoint Protection and the upgrade to version 12 was thought necessary as it will not only be able to protect systems running Microsoft Windows, Mac OS and Linux systems, but also newer operating systems such as Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2, and mobile devices as well.
David Briggs, Manager of IT Infrastructure elaborated on the necessity in a statement distributed by Symantec saying, “As online learning continues to become more integrated with traditional classroom learning and mobile devices become more prevalent in the classroom, we’ll see a need for increased, flexible and proactive security as provided by Symantec Endpoint Protection.”
Worldwide, hackers are known to target government websites and infrastructure as government bodies are not best known for their up-to-date online protection and security systems. The department’s computer-based learning environment houses disparate systems and supports many browsers. Symantec’s antivirus software is compatible with Microsoft’s popular software packages such as Windows, Internet Explorer and Office. Additionally, it also protects systems using non-Microsoft browsers such as Firefox and Safari, and web-based email systems such as Hotmail and Gmail. This will enable protection for users irrespective of the operating system they choose to use.
Symantec’s Endpoint has a component called Symantec Insight. It monitors virtually all the programs on the Internet and ranks each according to its reputation (good or bad based on the threat of infection). The programs are tracked by age, prevalence and security rating. This provides another layer of security since users are alerted about any risky program when a website is being accessed or a program is being downloaded. Craig Scroggie, vice president and managing director, Pacific region, Symantec, said, “It’s crucial for educational institutions to provide students and staff with state-of-the-art defence against all types of attacks.”
Image credit: Symantec
Oh another advert from our friendly Symantec salesmen. Slow news day guys?
I wouldn’t say it was the most probing of articles, but it’s not an ad — although it was written from a press release. Essentially it’s a followup to this story back in May, which was written from a tender:
http://delimiter.com.au/2011/05/02/tassie-education-dept-wants-mac-linux-anti-virus/
I only commented on this Renai because there seems to be growing number of articles appearing on tech security that seem to me to be very close to advertisements for commercial anti-malware vendors. In general my impression has been that it almost never happens here and I for one would like it to see it stay that way.
When I see what are obvious cut and paste articles taken from press releases without it being clearly identified as such I suspect that the journalists are getting lazy. This makes me doubt the integrity of other material on that particular site. So far the integrity of Delimiter in this regard has remained intact and I feel I can rely on what is reported. Your opinion pieces are always worth reading and more importantly you are prepared to accept criticism and comments from your readers and quickly admit if there has been an error. Please keep up the good work and maintain the standard.
Cheers Bob, I really appreciate your feedback!
To be honest I think our quality at Delimiter has slipped a bit over the past several weeks. I’m a bit tired after a huge year so I’m not going after stories with the same vim and vigour I usually exhibit. I would say that’s fairly standard for many people at this time of year ;) We’ll be on a reduced publishing schedule from about here until the new year.
However, I can definitely promise that in the new year I will definitely attempt to maintain our integrity and the quality of our work. It’s probably the thing that I am most passionate about :)
Nooo. Don’t start writing stories based on tenders. Leave that to ITNews.
I only tend to write stories on tenders where there’s a major technology change (say, Windows to Linux, for example), or where the value of the contract is likely to be > $50 million.
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