Item: Symantec Encryption
Rating: 2
Author: Curt Sminkey

Overall Satisfaction with Symantec Endpoint Encryption

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Symantec Endpoint Encryption in our remote laptops to protect against any data theft in the event a laptop is lost or stolen. Since many remote users tend to keep a majority of their files stored locally, this is more important than someone located in the office where a majority of files are located on a network drive.

Pros and Cons

Pros

We can manage and view the status of each client from a centralized server.
It sync passwords with the local Windows account so there are no additional passwords the user needs to remember.
Our help desk is able to use the One-time password feature if the passwords get out of sync and the user is locked out.

Cons

The process to set up a user account is a real pain. Symantec requires the user answer a bunch of security questions if they need to reset their password, but no one ever remembers the answers to the questions that they selected.
Since we use this for remote users who don't always connect to our VPN, when they change their network password it isn't always reflected in Windows and the Symantec Endpoint Encryption (SEE) passwords frequently get out of sync. When the user eventually does connect to the VPN, they do sync and really throw the user for a loop in which passwords to use.
We found a huge problem with SSDs where an encrypted drive operated twice as slow as a mechanical drive. I believe this was addressed in a later release.

Return on Investment

I can't think of any positive impacts to ROI. To my knowledge, we've never had a laptop go missing where SEE had protected the data. I guess that's a good thing?
Negatively, we spend a lot of time getting it to operate effectively (usually during the boot up/logging in process). Which is usually only a temporary fix because passwords never stay in sync because of our environment with off-site users

Alternatives Considered

BitLocker Drive Encryption

We are in the process of evaluating BitLocker as a replacement to SEE to use in Windows 10 laptops since it is included with Windows.

Other Software Used

Symantec Enterprise Vault, IBM MaaS360, Skype for Business, Microsoft Exchange, WebEx Meetings

Likelihood to Recommend

We find it very difficult to manage. Users are always needing their passwords reset as they rarely stay in sync with Windows. And from a security standpoint, if the user account is compromised, then the encryption is useless because it's the same password. The time to encrypt or decrypt a drive seems much longer than I would expect and many users experienced a huge decrease in performance with an encrypted drive.

Comments

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puneet khabya
commented 9 years ago
Regarding Self Recovery questions to be configured by the user, that feature is optional and can be skipped by the user. Regarding Single Sign On feature, there is a trade-off between ease of use and security. If you want less intervention while booting up the endpoint, you can choose Single Sign On. If you want it to be more secure, disable single sign on. Users will then have to type and remember 2 passwords.

Symantec Endpoint Encryption Review