Nortel and Symantec are combining their industry leading expertise in high-performance networks and information security to establish a strategic relationship intended to provide next generation solutions for seamless defense against a wide variety of threats from the core of the network through the desktop. Through this relationship, Symantec and Nortel want to make it possible for service providers and enterprises to eliminate specific threats before they have the opportunity to spread.


As the first initiative in this relationship, the companies have combined the power of Nortel's hardware- accelerated deep-packet inspection with Symantec's expertise in countering global threats to develop a prototype of a high-performance security engine that can be deployed within the existing switched-network infrastructure. When deployed in a data center, the technology is expected to address the most dangerous attacks within the high-speed, switched network before they can reach the servers. Based on Nortel's industry-leading application switch portfolio, the prototype tracks and stops threats using signatures updated in near real-time by Symantec's LiveUpdate technology.