The Broadcom Transition
I trace Symantec’s history from its 1982 founding by Dr. Gary Hendrix to the 2020 Broadcom acquisition of its enterprise security division for $10.7 billion. The company expanded from natural language processing tools to a security giant through numerous acquisitions. It purchased C&E Software in 1984 and acquired the Peter Norton brand in 1990. The 2007 launch of Symantec Endpoint Protection version 11.0 merged legacy products such as Sygate Enterprise Edition and Network Access Control. This version aimed to fix the bloat of Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition 10.0, which had a disk footprint of almost 100 MB, by reducing it to 21 MB. In 2009, Symantec introduced a managed service where staff deploy and manage installations remotely, and in 2010, it released a Small Business Edition with a faster installation process. The company grew by acquiring VeriSign’s authentication business in 2010 and Blue Coat in 2016. As of 2016, Symantec claimed to use data from 175 million devices that have installed Endpoint Security in 175 countries. By 2024, Symantec held the position of the second-largest seller in the endpoint security market, trailing Trend Micro by only five percent. Broadcom’s acquisition shifted the focus toward enterprise solutions, leaving uncertainty for those using consumer-focused products.
Technical Evolution and Flaws
Symantec introduced machine learning and cloud connectivity to modernize its defenses. Version 12.0 brought Symantec Insight in 2011 to catch mutating malware, while version 12.1.2 added support for VMware vShield in late 2012. The 2016 release of version 14 incorporated machine learning to find patterns in digital data, memory exploit mitigation, and performance improvements. However, security flaws regularly damaged the product’s reputation. The Lords of Dharmaraja stole the source code in early 2012, and a 2012 update caused Windows XP machines to encounter a Blue Screen of Death. In 2014, Offensive Security discovered an exploit in the Application and Device control driver during a penetration test of a financial services organization, which allowed a logged-in user to gain system access. In 2019, a researcher discovered the SEMZTPTN Race Condition bug in the Client Management and Proactive Threat Protection components. This flaw, also known as Symantec Endpoint Minimized Timed Protection, allowed a self-defense bypass that directly resulted in protection mechanism failure. I find the company’s inability to prevent such core component failures to be its most glaring weakness.
The CrowdStrike Rivalry
CrowdStrike provides a cloud-native alternative to the Symantec legacy through its Falcon platform. Co-founded in 2011, CrowdStrike launched the Falcon antivirus package in June 2013. Its single-agent architecture uses a kernel-mode driver on Windows to stream telemetry to a cloud engine. This model contrasts with the heavier, multi-product bundles Symantec offers. In 2024, CrowdStrike faced a massive crisis when a faulty configuration update crashed 8.5 million computers, leading Delta Air Lines to file a lawsuit in Georgia seeking $500 to $550 million in damages following that specific outage. You should realize that both companies fight for dominance using very different technological philosophies. In 2023, CrowdStrike introduced Charlotte AI to assist with automated threat triaging and Falcon Foundry for no-code application development. The company also released Falcon Identity Threat Protection in 2020 and reported $3.06 billion in revenue for 2024, a 36 percent increase. In 2026, CrowdStrike continued its expansion through the acquisition of SGNL for $750 million and Seraphic Security for $420 million. Does the massive telemetry from Symantec’s 175 million devices provide more protection than the behavioral indicators used by the Falcon platform?
