Cupertino, CA - May 19, 1998. IBM and Symantec Corporation announced today that they would combine forces to deliver a single family of anti-virus products which will be marketed under the Norton AntiVirus brand name.

Symantec will license IBM's immune system technology and patents and will combine it with its own technology to produce a range of products, including new solutions to support IBM platforms. As part of the agreement, IBM has also assigned its existing anti-virus customer and OEM contracts to Symantec and will recommend Norton AntiVirus to its corporate customers worldwide as the anti-virus solution of choice. In addition IBM and Symantec intend to sell and market the Norton AntiVirus product line worldwide.

In a related announcement, Intel said today it is incorporating IBM's anti-virus engine technology into its LANDesk Virus Protect products and other Intel network management products featuring LANDesk Virus Protect functionality.

"Combining IBM's technology with Symantec's brand strength and heritage in the anti-virus sector takes protection against virus infection to a new, higher level," said Phyllis Byrne, vice president of Distributed Systems Services for IBM. "We believe Symantec's current anti-virus products are the best available and will only be strengthened with the addition of our technology. We are confident in recommending the Norton AntiVirus solution to our customers."

Symantec president and CEO, Gordon Eubanks, added: "Corporate organizations already recognize Symantec and the Norton brand as a solution they can trust to protect against the threat of virus attack. By working with IBM to further develop their immune system technology and incorporate it into a comprehensive range of Norton AntiVirus products, we will offer corporate customers the most comprehensive anti-virus solution available."

Ed Ekstrom, vice president, Intel Small Business and Networking Group and general manager, Systems Management Division, said: "Combining IBM's leading anti-virus scanning technology with our anti-virus policy and management expertise provides our customers the best anti-virus detection, management and protection technology currently available. We will pursue the possibility of incorporating the virus detection software resulting from the IBM/Symantec alliance when it becomes available."

The alliance with Symantec complements IBM's announcement earlier this month of its eNetwork Software security and directory integration solution, which provides a comprehensive security solution for extending customers' information technology infrastructure to the Worldwide Web. The eNetwork Software security solution leverages IBM's decades of experience with information security and allows companies with large, complex computer systems to handle their entire range of security needs through one company.

IBM's anti-virus technology, part of the IBM SecureWay comprehensive portfolio of security offerings, has been awarded six patents for inventions, ranging from a neural network that uses artificial intelligence to detect new viruses automatically to the immune system itself. IBM is the first company to develop an immune system that can detect previously unknown viruses, analyze them, and distribute a cure worldwide, all automatically and within minutes of first discovering new viruses.

Symantec's multi-tier virus protection strategy is the basis for products that protect the enterprise at the desktop, groupware, server, Internet and gateway levels. The Norton AntiVirus product line uses innovative Bloodhound heuristic technology to detect and remove both known and unknown viruses. Norton AntiVirus also includes LiveUpdate, which automatically updates users with the latest virus definitions over the Internet.

For more information, please refer to:

• IBM questions and answers
• Symantec questions and answers