Survey Cites Three Companies Getting Vote of Trust

Enterprise Networks & Servers, Oct 2004

According to the recent Yankee Group 2004 Enterprise security Services survey of U.S. enterprises, Symantec, Cisco and Network Associates (now McAfee) rank as the three most trusted security product vendors.

Primary research by the Yankee Group shows that 43 percent of the 400 U.S. enterprises surveyed named Symantec as one of their top three most trusted, followed closely by Cisco and its very strong brand recognition. Network Associates received the third highest votes in the field of 20, a strong improvement over its 2003 survey ranking.

"Survey results show that firewalls combined with antivirus are the two most highly valued security solutions," said Phebe Waterfield, Yankee Group security Solutions & Services analyst. "However, the lower ranking of firewall vendors Checkpoint, SonicWall and NetScreen compared to antivirus and security players Cisco, Network Associates and Symantec demonstrates that vendors need to do more than network security to gain an enterprise's trust.

"Surprisingly, Checkpoint, a well established security brand, barely made the top 10 selected, trailing behind less 'security branded' vendors such as Oracle and Microsoft," Waterfield continued. "Network equipment vendors, including Siemens, 3Com, Nortel and Lucent, achieved surprising high rankings. 3Com in particular has done a great job creating a strong security position in just the last year."