EUR 850.00 For Business Accounts Only

Morningstar | Symantec's Caught Between the Enterprise and Consumer Spaces

While Symantec's evolution in the enterprise space is working toward a distinct strategy, the company has lacked consistency at the helm, and we expect internal disruptions and the reliance on consumer profits to inhibit sustainable operating results. Symantec's combination of consumer cybersafety and enterprise security makes it the largest pure-play security vendor. In the consumer space, the company's Norton cybersecurity solutions and LifeLock identity theft protection are prominent brands that offer individuals and families security from malicious threats on devices and their personas. Symantec's enterprise solutions are well regarded and cover products and security services for endpoints, email, networks, and cloud. The company has embraced the notion of providing a security platform as IT and security teams try to reel in the proliferation of security vendors deployed within their networks. Symantec has relied on its presence in the cutthroat consumer market for operating profits, and we expect cloud-based enterprise security to help diversify profit inflows.In the enterprise space, Symantec has melded its discrete point solutions into an integrated cyberdefense platform. The solutions that protect various threat vectors are supplemented by services, including managed security that allow overwhelmed teams to rely on Symantec's experts. We see high growth in areas such as cloud access security, secure web gateways, and data loss prevention keeping Symantec in front of businesses. However, we expect more holistic security platforms from competitors, which are expanding from well-entrenched positions, to challenge Symantec's inroads into this valuable space.We view the consumer security market as very challenging due to the quantity of competitors that perpetually lower prices to swap subscribers. With a declining PC market and operating system providers installing competing products complimentarily, Symantec is moving toward selling ubiquitous web protection. We opine that identity security is equally fraught with challenges, but we envision Symantec slightly benefiting by consumers adopting Norton and LifeLock bundles for comprehensive protection.