Called the Symantec Security Management System, the package integrates standalone security products into a more-streamlined setup that can be centrally maintained.
With the release, Symantec becomes the latest security company to take the streamlining approach. Corporate clients have been looking for ways to reduce the amount of time system administrators need to patch computers and respond to new viruses and worms.
"Customers have told us that the network perimeter is disappearing, their security risks are rising, internal staff resources are slim and regulatory pressures are high," Symantec CEO John W. Thompson said in a statement.
Last week, Nortel Networks revealed that it would link its products together into an integrated network-security platform. Cisco Systems, Check Point Software and IBM made similar announcements later in the week.
Standalone network-protection products, such as intrusion-detection systems and firewalls, flag any unusual network behavior as a security "event."
But the products receive an overwhelming amount of such data, some innocuous and some serious. If a worker accidentally types in the wrong Web address, that registers as an event, and an outside scan of the network by an attacker looking for a way in can create hundreds or thousands of events.
Enabling these standalone products to communicate helps cut through the mass of information and sort the true threats from the false alarms. And in fact, products that can't be centrally managed may not actually be doing much to help security, according to John Pescatore, research director for Internet security at Gartner.
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