Gen Digital
Gen Digital Inc. (formerly Symantec Corporation and NortonLifeLock Inc.) is a multinational software company co-headquartered in Tempe, Arizona and Prague, Czech Republic.
[8] Founded in 1982 by Gary Hendrix with a National Science Foundation grant, Symantec was originally focused on artificial intelligence-related projects, including a database program.
[citation needed] After a slow start for sales of Q&A in the fall of 1985 and spring of 1986, Rod Turner, a Symantec Sr. Executive, signed up a new advertising agency called Elliott/Dickens, embarked on an aggressive new advertising campaign, and came up with the "Six Pack Program" in which all Symantec employees, regardless of role, went on the road, training and selling nationwide in the United States.
[14] Simultaneously, a promotion was run jointly with SofSell (which was Symantec's exclusive wholesale distributor in the United States for the first year that Q&A was on the market).
During this time, Symantec was advised by its board members Jim Lally and John Doerr that if it would cut its expenses and grow revenues enough to achieve cash flow break-even, then Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers would back the company in raising more venture capital.
[15][16] Turner Hall Publishing's first offering was Note-It, a notation utility add-in for Lotus 1-2-3, which was developed by David Whitney, and licensed to Symantec.
Soon after the acquisition of TimeLine/Breakthrough Software, Eubanks reorganized Symantec, structuring the company around product-centric groups, each having its development, quality assurance, technical support, and product marketing functions, and a general manager with profit and loss responsibility.
At the TimeLine Product Group, Turner drove strong marketing, promotion and sales programs to accelerate momentum.
[23][24] Salem was abruptly fired in 2012 for disappointing earnings performance and replaced by Steve Bennett, a former CEO of Intuit and GE executive.
[25] In January 2013, Bennett announced a major corporate reorganization, with the goal of reducing costs and improving Symantec's product line.
This will tactically improve Symantec's bottom line but reduce the skills needed to ensure high-quality products in the long term.
"[27] In March 2014, Symantec fired Steve Bennett from his CEO position and named Michael Brown as interim president and chief executive.
The Symantec Anomaly Detection for Automotive is an IoT product for manufacturers and uses machine learning to provide in-vehicle security analytics.
With this acquisition, Thoma Bravo plans to merge the Symantec business unit with its own web certification company, DigiCert.
[37] In May 2018, Symantec initiated an internal audit to address concerns raised by a former employee,[38][39] causing it to delay its annual earnings report.
[43] On May 9, 2019, Symantec announced that Clark would be stepping down and that board member Rick Hill, previously put forward by Starboard, had been appointed interim president and CEO.
The sale closed on November 4, 2019, and subsequently, the company adopted the NortonLifeLock name and relocated its headquarters from Mountain View, California to LifeLock's offices in Tempe, Arizona.
[62] On January 17, 2008, Symantec announced[63] that it was spinning off its Application Performance Management (APM) business and the i3 product line to Vector Capital.
[64] Precise Software Solutions took over development, product management, marketing and sales for the APM business, launching as an independent company on September 17, 2008.
[67] On April 18, 2008, Symantec completed the acquisition of AppStream, a nonpublic Palo Alto, California-based provider of endpoint virtualization software.
[68] On October 9, 2008, Symantec announced its intent to acquire Gloucester-based MessageLabs (spun off from Star Internet in 2007) to boost its Software as a Service (SaaS) business.
[91][92][citation needed] In January 2011, multiple vulnerabilities in Symantec products that could be exploited by a denial-of-service attack, and thereby compromise a system, were reported.
[citation needed] In January 2012, James Gross filed a lawsuit against Symantec for distributing fake scareware scanners that purportedly alerted users of issues with their computers.
Gross claimed that after the scan, only some of the errors and problems were corrected, and he was prompted by the scanner to purchase a Symantec app to remove the rest.
[99] In February 2012, it was reported that Verisign's network and data had been hacked repeatedly in 2010, but that the breaches had not been disclosed publicly until they were noted in an SEC filing in October 2011.
[100] Oliver Lavery, director of security and research for nCircle, asked rhetorically, "Can we trust any site using Verisign SSL certificates?
[104] According to Mandiant, Symantec security products used by The New York Times detected only one of 45 pieces of malware that were installed by Chinese hackers on the newspaper's network during three months in late 2012.
[105][106] Symantec responded: "Advanced attacks like the ones the New York Times described in the following article,
The advanced capabilities in our [E]ndpoint offerings, including our unique reputation-based technology and behavior-based blocking, specifically target sophisticated attacks.
[107]In February 2015, Symantec was found guilty of two counts of patent infringement in a suit by Intellectual Ventures Inc and ordered to pay $17 million in compensation and damages,[108] In September 2016, this decision was reversed on appeal by the Federal Circuit.
