"We are working on privacy products that will provide transaction security and it should be part of our 2006 product launch"

Jocelyn Chung

Senior Product  Marketing Manager,  Consumer and Small  Business Marketing,  Symantec

Worldwide, online business is increasing exponentially. And Symantec wants a
piece of this action. It is therefore working on a transaction security product
under its Norton brand, which will ensure that users do not risk their personal
information when they carry out e-commerce activities or fall prey to phishing
either. Jocelyn Chung says that the nitty-gritty on how to take this product to
market are still being worked out, but she is excited about it nonetheless.

What new aspects will be visible in the Norton product
roadmap for 2006?

Every year we launch customer products as part of our product
roadmap. But we make sure that the new versions are contemporary and make little
adjustments so that it has features which will be of use to

customers.

This year as well we will be coming out with the new Norton
2006 range of products. This time around, our focus is to make our products more
easy to use and also relevant to our customers.

Which are the thrust areas for Norton this year?

We are going to concentrate our efforts on three areas this
year. The first is systems security. Norton has traditionally been known for its
ability to protect systems from external malicious attacks and we will continue
in this endeavor.

The second focus area is support. We want to provide our
customers with tools that will help them to ensure that their anti-virus (AV)
programs are up and running all the time. We want to empower our customers so
that they are in a position to decide the level of support they require and can
resolve basic support related issues themselves, making them more independent of
external service providers.

The third area that Norton is looking at strongly is media
security.

Why has Norton suddenly decided to focus on digital media
security, moving away from its conventional model of offering security to PC and
PC-related systems?

These days, people use a lot of digital media in digicams,
MP3 player and even mobile phones to store their data. These are not mere files,
but a figment of their lives that they carry in their pockets all the time and
therefore they treasure it a lot. This information has a lot of emotional
linkage. But at the same time, users are not very sure whether all their data on
these devices is secure.

The Norton Ghost 10.0 provides personalized protection and
automatically detects when new storage devices that are added to the computer
and determines which drives should be backed up and which are optimal storage
destination locations. The software also includes support for 128-, 192- and
256-bit AES encryption strengths, ensuring stored data is not accessible to
unauthorized users. It works with a wide range of hard drives and removable
media, including CDR/RW and DVD+R/RW drives, USB and FireWire (IEEE 1394)
devices, and Iomega Zip and Jaz drives.

Which other areas is Norton planning to tap?

We are working on privacy products which will provide
transaction security. Here we will focus on the online purchasing habits of
customers and ensure that their privacy is not breached. This yet to be named
product should be part of our 2006 product launch.

What model will you adopt to sell this product line?

A lot of details have to be worked out on how it will be
marketed and sold, but we hope to have it out sometime next year. We will tie up
with financial institutions, online sales portals and other companies that offer
e-commerce through their websites and will deploy its privacy products on their
backend systems.

This will ensure that critical information like user
identity; password, credit card details etc are not compromised. Besides
securing online business, the product will also have anti-phishing features so
that users are not directed to fake URLs and asked to submit their personal
information there.

What are the highlights for Norton in 2005?

This year, we are trying our best to simplify our products to
create a good user experience and also make them more relevant to our users.
According to our surveys, over 35% of users are not well protected not because
there are not good security products, but because they do not know which one is
right for them. So they compromise on their safety and simply ignore certain
emails, perceiving those to be malicious.

We have already put anti-spyware features in all our AV
products. We are also bringing in Norton Security Inspector (NIS) into our
Internet Security product line. We have noticed that PCs are a maximum risk when
they are downloading programs. And users will not always change the level of
their security settings to allow that no malicious content comes in with the
programs. The NIS will monitor the security settings constantly and make sure
that they are not set at minimal levels which will compromise the machine's
security.

And how will you make your products simpler?

In the new range of products that we have introduced just a
few weeks ago, we have integrated a feature known as Norton Solution Center.
This module gives a snapshot overview of the PC, the files and programs within
it. Like a dashboard of a car, it will show which areas of the system are
unsecured and need to be protected on a continuous basis. We have also
redesigned our product packaging for this.

How will redesigning your product packs make it simpler and
user friendly for customers?

After a lot of analysis, Norton has come up with a user
activity diagram which shows the 12 activities for which customers use our
products. On each of our products, this matrix is mentioned, and the particular
activity for this the product has been designed is highlighted. So users can
pick a pack, see the highlighted activity and figure for themselves whether this
suits their requirements.