The Symantec Protection Suite Advanced Business Edition aims to offer SMB customers more choice in how they protect their business information. And in order to help those on a budget, the firm will lower the price of the suite by 40%.

We’ve contacted Symantec for a specific price and release date regarding the New Zealand market.

As well as offering endpoint and messaging security, desktop, laptop and server backup and recovery, Symantec says it will also provide hosted options for email and web security. A 2009 Symantec survey found that SMBs 50% of SMBs do not have endpoint protection and 47% were not backing up their data.

The suite will protect endpoints like laptops and desktops, provide messaging security and prevent data loss with advanced content filtering at the mail gateway.

In case of an outbreak or a system failure, the suite's backup and recovery capabilities will help SMBs recover individual files and folders.

“SMBs today are handling valuable information and having the right information at the right time can mean the difference between success and going out of business,” said Francis deSouza, Senior Vice President, Enterprise Security Group, Symantec. “Cybercriminals are going after SMBs, and those who are only using antivirus as a security solution are not protected completely, putting their businesses at risk. Today’s SMBs need complete protection that can be easily deployed and managed while providing the highest level of protection.”

Ray Boggs, VP Small and Medium Business Research for IDC, added, "SMBs are especially vulnerable to security threats because they don’t typically have the time, money or IT resources to implement the kind of comprehensive security that large companies have access to. Downtime, whether it’s due to a malware attack, a server crash, or a loss of confidential information via email, can be costly to a company of any size, but is even more critical to an SMB that faces tight margins and increasingly intense competition.”

You can find out more about the new Symantec Protection Suite for SMBs in the first issue of Start-Up, available June 14th. For details on how to subscribe, hit this link.