Partners Name Symantec Top Security Vendor

Symantec Products, Support, and Partnership Outperform Competitors In 2002 VARBusiness Annual Report Card

CUPERTINO, Calif. - August 23, 2002 - Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC), the world leader in Internet security, today announced that VARBusiness magazine has named Symantec the overall award winner in the Security Management Software category for the 17th annual VARBusiness Annual Report Card (ARC) awards. Symantec swept all three subcategories-product innovation, support, and partnership-to outperform competitors and win the prestigious award.

"Winning an ARC award represents a vote of confidence in a company by the channel partners who interface with that company every day," said Robert C. DeMarzo, VARBusiness Editorial Director/ CMP Vice President. "We congratulate Symantec for its commendable performance with its partners during what has been the most challenging period the IT industry has ever faced."

"We prize and respect the relationship we have with our partners and consider it a key to Symantec's ongoing leadership in the Internet security marketplace," said Allyson Seelinger, Symantec's vice president North America Enterprise and Consumer Channels. "As a result, we are truly honored to receive the ARC award, and we are pleased with the industry recognition of our commitment to work with the channel to meet the security needs of our customers."

The VARBusiness ARC has become the industry standard for recognizing outstanding partner programs in product and service categories. The report is based on a survey of more than 5,000 channel partners who evaluated 70 market-leading vendors across 15 product categories. Independent research firm Bernett Research conducted the study. Participating partners then rated the importance of 11 criteria in three key areas-product innovation, support, and partnership-and rated their satisfaction with their vendors in each criterion. Complete results of the report will be published in the Oct. 14, 2002, edition of VARBusiness.

About the Symantec Partner Program
The Symantec Partner Program focuses on providing enterprise partners-such as proven Internet security experts, value-added resellers and other channel partners-with the expertise and resources necessary to plan, implement and manage complex security architectures for their customers using Symantec security solutions. In addition to comprehensive sales expertise and award-winning technical support, Symantec offers enterprise partners extensive fee-based training and certification on the operation and installation of Symantec solutions in four technical areas critical in today's networked environment: virus protection and content management, firewall and VPN technologies, intrusion detection systems and vulnerability management. For more information or to sign up for the Symantec Partner Program, partners should visit www.symantecpartner.com.

About Symantec
Symantec, the world leader in Internet security technology, provides a broad range of content and network security software and appliance solutions to individuals, enterprises and service providers. The company is a leading provider of client, gateway and server security solutions for virus protection, firewall and virtual private network, vulnerability management, intrusion detection, Internet content and e-mail filtering, remote management technologies and security services to enterprises and service providers around the world. Symantec's Norton brand of consumer security products is a leader in worldwide retail sales and industry awards. Headquartered in Cupertino, Calif., Symantec has worldwide operations in 38 countries. For more information, please visit www.symantec.com.

Symantec's Canadian operations are headquartered in Toronto with offices in Montreal, Ottawa, Calgary 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).

NOTE TO EDITORS: If you would like additional information on Symantec Corporation and its products, please view the Symantec Press Center at http://www.symantec.com/PressCenter/ on Symantec's Web site.

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