Symantec plans to build security with user inputs

Users of Symantec Corporation will henceforth play a major role in helping the company build its new anti-virus signature and security systems.

Symantec Research Labs' chief technology officer Mark Bregman said the company was building "reputation-based security systems", which would be completely data-focused instead of just protecting systems or servers.

"Symantec identifies 'safe downloads' made by its registered users and accordingly identifies them as 'reputed users'. Programs or files downloaded by these 'reputed' users are judged as 'safe programs'. These files would be recommended as 'safe' files to all other users. Files or programs downloaded by other users would be tested. If found malicious, new anti-virus signatures would be developed for these programs," Bregman stated.

Symantec has a registered-customer-base of 50 million and its softwares are used for over 200 million desktops globally.

"A large number of Symantec users provide us information on suspicious programs. Automated systems developed by Symantec track such codes and using this information, accordingly, new anti-virus signatures are developed," he added.

The company is planning to launch its three new softwares "" Mr Clean, Virtual Machine-Aware Software and Software Fault Tolerance that are 'data focused' and reputation-based products.