Symantec Demonstrates World's First Anti-Virus Technology for the Palm OS Platform

CUPERTINO, Calif. - June 8, 2000 - Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC), a world leader in Internet security technology, today announced the development of the world's first anti-virus technology for the Palm OS® platform. This new security prototype incorporates Symantec's award-winning anti-virus engine technologies re-engineered to run efficiently on handheld computers and other portable applications.

"The ubiquitous devices and platforms that will enable the Internet to be available everywhere pose new risks and challenges," said Ron Moritz, Symantec's chief technical officer. "As corporations embrace handheld devices and extend their network, securing programs and data on new platforms will become a necessity. Our goal is to safeguard critical data against potential attacks anywhere data wants to be by providing Internet security on a variety of platforms."

According to a 1999 IDC report titled "Smart Handheld Devices Market Review and Forecast," an estimated 50 million personal handhelds will enter businesses worldwide by 2003. Additionally, Forrester Research estimates that the mobile workforce will account for 57 percent of the total workforce in the next two years - a rise from the current 35 percent.

Although there are currently no known computer virus, worm or Trojan horse threats targeting handheld devices, the Palm OS is susceptible to malicious code like other mainstream computing platforms since it runs a wide variety of programs.

Symantec's anti-virus prototype technology uses an optimized "micro-engine" to enable researchers at the Symantec AntiVirus Research Center (SARC) to detect known potential threats on the Palm OS platform. Due to the smaller memory and storage requirements on handhelds, Symantec is also investigating ways to leverage heuristics and other more advanced non-fingerprint-based technologies to eliminate the dependence on the larger virus definitions used in today's anti-virus products.

Researchers at the Symantec AntiVirus Research Center (SARC) have received numerous patents on anti-virus technologies and have authored books, including Internet Security Professional Reference and Windows NT Server 4: Security, Troubleshooting and Optimization. Additionally, they regularly contribute to Virus Bulletin, Secure Computing, Communications of the ACM and other major computer security journals.

Symantec AntiVirus Research Center
SARC is one of the industry's largest dedicated team of virus experts. With offices located in the United States, Japan, Australia, and the Netherlands, the sun never sets on SARC. The center's mission is to provide swift, global responses to computer virus threats, proactively research and develop technologies that eliminate such threats, and educate the public on safe computing practices. As new computer viruses appear, SARC develops identification and detection for these viruses, and provides either a repair or delete operation, thus keeping users protected against the latest virus threats.

About Symantec
Symantec, a world leader in Internet security technology, provides content security solutions to enterprise organisations and helps companies manage and support workforces that use computers and other mobile devices.

Symantec's Canadian operations are headquartered in Toronto with offices in Montreal, Ottawa, and Vancouver. For more information on Symantec products or current promotions, contact the Canadian office at (416) 441-3676 or access Symantec's Canadian web-site at www.symantec.ca. Symantec is an active member of the Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft (CAAST).

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FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENT: This press release contains forward-looking statements. There are certain important factors that could cause Symantec's future development efforts to differ materially from those anticipated by some of the statements made above. Among these are the anticipation of the growth of certain market segments, the positioning of Symantec's products in those segments, the competitive environment in the software industry, new security threats, dependence on other products, changes to operating systems and product strategy by vendors of operating systems, and the importance of new Symantec products. Additional information concering those and other factors is contained in the "Risk Factors" section of the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended April 2, 1999.