Question/Issue:
This document describes the new features and enhancements that were made to Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition 8.0.


Solution:
The following are the new features and enhancements in Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition 8.0:

• Upgraded NetWare support: Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition supports NetWare 6.
  
• CPU utilization improvements: Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition now provides additional settings for configuring the CPU priority of scans.
  
• New Client groups: In earlier versions of Norton AntiVirus Corporate Edition, all computers that were managed by the same parent server shared the same policies. The client group feature provides more management flexibility by allowing you to create logical groups of computers within server groups. Computers that are managed by the same parent server no longer need to share the same policy. A parent server is a computer that is running Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition Server that communicates with Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition Clients to obtain configuration updates and to send alerts.
  
• Smaller virus definitions files size: The average sizes of virus definitions files that are used by the Virus Definition Transport Method have shrunk from 4 MB to under 100 KB. The reduction in file size significantly decreases network traffic in environments that use the Virus Definition Transport Method.
  
• Automatic Enabler: You can configure File System Realtime Protection to allow users to temporarily disable protection and have it automatically enable after a set time interval elapses.
  
• One button update: The Symantec System Center now offers quick access to virus definitions updating, which is accessible from the system hierarchy, server group, or parent server level.
  
• Multiple LiveUpdate servers: Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition now supports multiple internal LiveUpdate servers.
  
• Continuous LiveUpdate: Continuous LiveUpdate allows you to manage virus definitions file updates for Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition clients with an Internet connection, but infrequent or no connection to a parent server. You can specify a maximum number of days after which definitions are out-of-date. When definitions exceed this date, Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition automatically initiates a silent LiveUpdate when it detects an available Internet connection.
  
• Quarantine Purge:The Quarantine Purge feature allows you to automatically delete files in local Quarantine directories that are older than a specified date.
  
• Tamper protection: Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition clients create and forward events to their parent servers when a specified set of registry keys are modified.
  
• Improved server-group security: Server groups no longer have a default password, and you can also force a server group to have a password.
  
• Enhanced event forwarding: Earlier versions of Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition clients forwarded a small subset of possible events to their parent servers, including:
  • Scan start
  • Scan stop
  • Scan aborted
  • Virus found
    
  This set of events is forwarded by default, but now you can configure Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition clients to forward all events to their parent servers.
  
• Enhanced file and folder exclusions: When you configure scan options for a group of computers, you can now exclude specific files and/or folders by typing the paths of files and folders that you want to exclude from the scan.
  
• Enhanced rollouts to secondary servers: The pool that is used for client updates is now multi-threaded, which optimizes network and CPU usage. Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition primary servers now push virus definitions updates asynchronously to clients and secondary servers and handles secondary server rollback.
  
• Improved scanning: Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition improves scanning in several ways:
  • The engine that is used to scan compressed files now decomposes the files in memory, rather than on disk. This significantly increases overall scanning speed.
  • Optimizations to Realtime scanning and file exclusions significantly reduces scan time.
  • Delay scanning on portable computers if the computer is running from its battery. The scan will run once the computer is reconnected to a wall current.
    
• Hierarchical Storage Management: Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM) automatically migrates data from server hard disks to another type of storage, such as optical disks and magnetic tape. HSM systems monitor data usage patterns and makes intelligent decisions about which data can move to slower devices and which data should stay on server hard disks. Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition now provides control over what should be scanned in an HSM system.
  
• Enhanced Symantec System Center: The Symantec System Center now provides columns that display the status of virus definition updates, and the last check-in time for clients.
  
• File System Realtime Protection status and notification: The Symantec System Center now displays the File System Realtime Protection statuses of managed computers. In addition, a warning dialog box appears on computers that have File System Realtime Protection disabled.
  
• Enhanced Discovery: The Discovery process has improved in two ways:
  • The topology service manages Discovery data more efficiently, which makes the Discovery process significantly faster.
  • The Discovery process is now server-group based. Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition queries the primary server in the server group for the secondary servers that are known to them, and then pings each secondary server. Building the list of secondary servers from the data that is returned by each secondary server lessens the possibility of a server remaining undiscovered during the Discovery process.
    
• Snooze: The snooze feature allows clients to delay a scan for a set interval of time. You can enable the snooze feature and set snooze intervals from the Symantec System Center console.
  
• Symantec Packager: Symantec Packager lets you create, modify, and build customized installation sets (or packages) that you can distribute to users on your network. Using Symantec Packager, you can tailor installations to fit your corporate environment by building packages that contain only the features and settings that your users need. Symantec Packager is available for Windows NT/2000 only. However, custom installation files that are created with Symantec Packager can be installed on any Microsoft 32-bit platform.

References:
README.TXT file for Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition 8.0

Document ID: 2002080711105548
Last Modified: 02/14/2007
Date Created: 08/07/2002
Product(s): Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition 8.0
Release(s): SAV 8.0