Symantec Endpoint Encryption Reviews

We use it on laptops and desktops. We use it for email, file and folder, and command-line encryption depending upon the customer's needs. 

We are a service provider for Symantec products. We also use it in our company. We have around 50 to 60 users.

Disk encryption and file and folder encryption are the most valuable and used features.

It is also very well integrated with Symantec Messaging Gateway and Symantec DLP, which is helpful in protecting any kind of information that goes outside. Symantec DLP catches an email and sends it to the encryption server. The encryption server encrypts the email and intimates to the user that confidential information is being sent out. The administrator can then take appropriate action.

Its remote deployment should be improved. Currently, there is no remote deployment for Symantec Endpoint Encryption. You have to install it manually.

There are some issues with AD integration and the time taken to reflect a password on the Endpoint Encryption Manager when a new user has changed the password, but they are already working on these issues, and these will be resolved in the next release.

I have been working with this solution for 14 years.

Currently, their support is less and slow. If I open any case, it is handled after two or three days, but their support will improve in the next two or three months.

The initial setup is straightforward. The deployment duration depends on your hard drive. It can take 5 to 10 minutes, half a day, or one day depending on the size of the hard drive. For 80 GB of data, it will take 7 to 8 hours depending on the hard drive and the RPM of the hard drive. For an SSD, it will take less time to encrypt the data.

I would definitely recommend this solution. I have seen a lot of endpoint encryption products, and Symantec is the best because it doesn't hamper the performance of the machine. If you use McAfee, it hampers the performance of the machine.

I would rate Symantec Endpoint Encryption an eight out of ten. Right now, there is an issue going on with their support. That's why I'm not giving it a ten out of ten.

I used this solution to protect my workstation from malware and other threats such as viruses and worms. It is very useful.

The most valuable feature is the ease of use.

The stability is good and it is easy to upgrade.

The security could be improved.

I have been working with Symantec Endpoint Encryption for six months.

The stability is good.

This product is very easy to install.

I can install and set up this solution on my own. It is quick to deploy, taking perhaps five minutes.

The license is not very expensive.

This is absolutely a product that I recommend.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

I like the management aspect of this solution. You don't want to have end-users tweak or set it themselves, so the fact that you could do it from a central point helped us a lot.

We really liked the vanilla flavor set up. It is stable as well.

What I didn't find helpful in the version we used is the fact that all devices had to be on the same network for us to push through the encryption. With lockdowns and people working from home nowadays because of the COVID-19 pandemic, there's no way to deploy a solution in that manner.

It should be easier to classify documents that should be encrypted, that is, to create policies for documents that should be encrypted. Maybe, it should be according to departments as well.

Customization should be a bit more granular because nowadays, things are very dynamic. Environments are very fluid. So, the policies should reflect that.

In terms of the policies you can apply, there should be a bit more granularity to it, and it should be something that you can turn on and turn off as needed.

I had used Symantec Endpoint Encryption for three months. We used the version before the last version.

It is a stable solution.

For me, the initial setup was intuitive, but then again, I'd had experience with deploying software for 10 years prior to that point.

Back then, deploying software was not like what it is today; it was much harder. You had to do a lot more customization. However, I have a lot experience, so I wouldn't have been phased by any issue I may have encountered.

I'm in Nigeria, and we also serve Ghana, Sierra Leone, Kenya, and a bit of South Africa. Whenever you're deploying security solutions such as Symantec Endpoint Encryption, there has to be a lot more focus on sensitizing the people who are going to be affected.

We train the IT staff on how to manage it, but we don't train the end-users on what it involves and the advantages of the solution. We also don't inform them of the changes they may have to make in terms of their behavior, how they access data, how they use the data, etc. We need to let them know that it doesn't mean that they are completely secure. The biggest issue about security is human error. So, I think sensitizing the users should also go hand in hand with deployment.

I would rate Symantec Endpoint Encryption at eight on a scale from one to ten.

We primarily use the solution for endpoint security.

Symantec Endpoint is good. We have been using it for more than five years and haven't had any trouble with it. It protects us without any issues.

In India, I am based out of Bangalore and my corporate office is in Lucknow, and we never had any compromises on the security site. Our firewall is very strong and all the devices are protected by Symantec. It does a really great job.

The solution is great for large-scale deployments.

The solution is pretty low maintenance and you rarely need the assistance of technical support.

The solution does slow down the device a little bit, once it's installed.

The Windows 10 comes with Defender. It has its own security layer. It's supposed to protect desktops and laptops running Windows 10. Right now, our question is, what is the additional protection we get from using any other antivirus or other packages on these machines? Symantec isn't really making it clear how they add to or enhance the level of protection we'd get from them if we kept them with Defender already on Windows 10.

We've been using the solution for five years.

The stability is good in the sense that we've never been compromised. It just runs in the background and is scanning. However, when scans do happen, it can slow down the machine. That's typical, and it only does it a little bit.

The solution is deployed on a large scale as we operate 1,000 locations in India and it's at all of them. You can't just protect the branch office, you need to protect every device in every office.

I've never needed to contact technical support.

The corporate office is in Lucknow, and I'm the technical director of a corporate group. I operate from Bangalore. I don't actually deal with the vendors or with the technical support team. My corporate team in Lucknow may be talking to some technical person at Symantec, however, I'm not aware of that. My responsibility is to advise someone on the technology side, so I heavily depend upon the reports and all that's available in public domain. 

I'm not sure what was evaluated beforehand. However, we are evaluating other options currently.

In September, our Symantec license is expiring, so we are looking at if there's anything else in Symantec's product library that we should try or if there are any better options than we should consider. Currently, I'm trying to download some reports to compare Symantec with other solutions as part of some initial research.

We've looked at a few different solutions. We hear that end devices like laptops or desktops are a bit slow when you have Norton installed. AVG looks to have fewer resources although it looks to be a little bit quicker than Norton and doesn't bring your system speed down. Windows 10 also already comes with Defender, so protection would be built right in.

We only use the solution on our own endpoints for our own company and don't necessarily deploy it for clients.

There are a lot of companies in India who are promoting these types of products. They may have quite a good idea about the packages and so on, what you can do, what you can't do and so on. Everyone seems well educated on it. It is not a very complicated solution. It's basically solid. 

You don't need that much technical support. Whether it's Symantec or TrendMicro or AVG or any other package it's all pretty self-sustaining. You'll simply notice it when you have a compromise, at which point you get alerted and then you look at what went wrong. Until you are compromised, you're happy with the product.

I approve of Symantec Endpoint. I've been happy with the solution for the last four or five years. There have been no issues and we have not been compromised until now. I'd definitely recommend Symantec.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. It does tend to slow down a machine when it does the scan. However, I've noticed the same slow down on competition like Norton or AVG and it doesn't slow anything down near as much as Norton.

We are using three of the product's modules. We are using encryption for messaging, we are using encryption for shared folders and we are using encryption for our hard drives.

The product has helped our organization by providing encryption options. For example, it is better to have encrypted messages because it is more secure. With the module for the shared folders, we can decide to use it as an addition to our active directory. So we can give users different rights within the active directory. The different set of rules we create in PGP is like an add-on to our active directory and again provides more secure access and restriction of access to some information.

The most valuable features are the messaging features and shared folders.

The hard drive encryption needs to be improved. There is an issue, for example, where we cannot easily do Microsoft updates. The updates stop before the PGP reboot is complete. So when PGP encryption from the hard drive is active, we can't update Microsoft Windows. As a work-around, we have to decrypt the encrypted hard drive, which takes an hour every time, and then do the updates and then encrypt again. It is time-consuming and there must be a better solution.

One other improvement I would like to see is the ability to get support directly from the seller. There should be a better way to open tickets directly from the seller to eliminate delays and have a better way that we can contact them and get help when we need it. Technical support is a problem.

We have been using Symantec Endpoint Encryption since 2013, or about six years.

It is not a very stable product based on our experience with how we use it. It is mostly the disk encryption issues and how long it takes to do Microsoft updates. So we actually open some tickets at technical support and also with the integrator who initially installed the system for us. So currently we are dissatisfied and we are looking at BitLocker instead of the PGP only for drive encryption. As it is a Microsoft product, it makes sense that it will work better with Microsoft updates.

The scalability of the product is fine. With PGP servers we can link the Windows account, active directory account with PGP so when I do an installation on a computer, all I have to do is open the profile of the new employee's machine and it is linked to a server. It doesn't matter how many people I link in. We currently have 40 people and the product is installed on all our computers. Most people in our company are consultants who work on the premises of our clients. They are not located within our offices.

We have contacted technical support in the past with specific issues but we haven't received any answer yet. So my impression is naturally that the technical support is not great.

We are currently looking at Kaspersky Endpoint Encryption for Business Events. I am actually doing testing with a free license that we have access to for 30 days. We are doing this in order to look at the value of the solution, functionalities of the software and if it can apply to our architecture.

Right now we are using Kaspersky but on individual bases. It's not centralized, so each computer has its own Kaspersky security model, but what we want is to be able to manage all the computers in our infrastructure from a central point entry. So that's why we are looking at that specific software. Symantec is not solving all our issues sufficiently.

We are also considering looking into BitLocker to perhaps replace the disk encryption module in Symantec Endpoint Encryption because it is not easy to use.

I wasn't with the company when the product was installed, but I presume the initial setup was complex. The deployment of the product usually takes very little time. I installed the software for new computers and I encrypt the disks. That is all that has to be done so the installation of the product is very quick. It is the encryption of the disk that takes time.

The installation was done by a consultant in 2013.

I am not sure of the licensing fees. I presume there are packages based on what you use. We have three modules (for messaging, disk encryption and shared folders). I believe there are five modules, but we have three out of five. The price scales depending on the number of modules that we use.

My advice to others who are considering this solution is to make sure that they do some testing if they are using disk encryption as we have had problems with updates. Our problem may depend on the version of Windows. So it may be different for other people. I didn't choose to use encryption before, so I learned a lot about the performance and the principle of encryption when it comes to messaging and share folders. So that part is good.

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate Symantec Endpoint Encryption as a six currently. The main problem for us is working with Microsoft updates within PGP. This should be possible because BitLocker is currently doing that which might be a reason we would switch. Updates for Microsoft OS are very complicated for us right now.

Its management is good, and it is also scalable and mostly stable.

Its decryption time needs to be improved. Currently, its decryption time is very long, and it takes double time than encryption. They need to work on that. Its encryption time is fine.

I have been using this solution for four to five years. I am using its latest version.

There are minor challenges related to the updates for Windows and Mac systems, but it is mostly stable.

It is scalable.

I didn't contact their technical support.

I would recommend this solution. I would rate Symantec Endpoint Encryption an eight out of ten.

The primary use case is for protecting accounts.

Protecting accounts.

We would like some advanced security protection features.

The stability has been good, so far.

The scalability is good.

The technical support is good.

The initial support was straightforward.

The solution has helped to increase staff productivity.

It is a good product.