Symantec scraps Sygate consumer firewall

One month after closing the Sygate Technologies takeover, Symantec is cutting the Sygate Personal Firewall products because of overlap with the Norton Personal Firewall.

The Sygate Personal Firewall and Sygate Personal Firewall Pro products will no longer be available effective Nov. 30, Symantec spokesman Phil Weiler said Monday. Consumers will receive special upgrade pricing when they buy a replacement product from Symantec?s Norton family of Internet security products, he said.

By pulling the Sygate Personal Firewall, Symantec is further reducing the options for people looking for a free firewall for their computer. Sygate offered the Sygate Personal Firewall at no cost and sold Sygate Personal Firewall Pro. Kerio Technologies has previously said it will discontinue its desktop firewall at the end of this year.

"While the Sygate products complement our enterprise offerings, there was an overlap on the consumer side of the business. After looking at the Sygate Personal Firewall technology we decided to discontinue the products and continue selling Norton Personal Firewall," Weiler said.

The Sygate Personal Firewall was downloaded more than 3.6 million times from CNET Download.com, a division of CNET Networks, the publisher of News.com.

Consumers looking for a free firewall still have options. These include Zone Labs' Zone Alarm, Microsoft's Windows Firewall and Jetico.

Symantec will continue to support and develop the Sygate enterprise product portfolio, including Symantec Sygate Enterprise Protection, Symantec Sygate On-Demand, Symantec Sygate Embedded and Symantec Sygate Network Access Control, Weiler said.

Symantec announced the takeover of Fremont, Calif.-based Sygate in August. The deal was closed in October.

[hwold454]

Symantec does it again

Once again, the evil Symantec buys another company and destroys it.

[Orion Blastar]

Symantec knifes the baby

Sygate Personal Firewall was one of the best free edition firewalls on the Internet. When I was helping friends and relatives who could not afford a Firewall get protected on the Internet, I used SPF because it was easy to use, had a small footprint, and had basic protection. I told them to upgrade to the commercial version if they needed more protection.

Now I may be forced to use, shudder, Zone Alarm Free, or suggest that they buy a copy of Symantec Internet Security with Norton Antivirus and Norton Firewall.

I guess next Symantec buys out Grisoft to get rid of the AVG Free Edition Virus Scanner, or Team Spybot to get rid of the free Spybot: Search and Destroy because both of them compete with Norton Antivirus?

Ironically having free products that prevent malware infections helps keep the Internet cleaner, and getting rid of the free products and forcing people to buy them will only increase the number of infections for the poor users who cannot afford the commercial software fees. That means those who can afford the commercial malware removal and prevention software will get a whole lot more malware emails from their poorer friends and relatives that could not afford commercial solutions, so they went without them. I guess getting 100+ malware infected emails a day is the price the rest of us pay for those out there who cannot afford commercial malware prevention software? At least our malware remover can detect them before we open up the emails, evenyone else won't notice the difference because they are sans commercial malware prevention software and will only help spread more malware.

QED: Fewer free malware prevention software equals more infected Windows systems on the Internet.

[Yog Sothoth]

OH NOES

gorram it! Sygate Personal Firewall Pro was the best firewall out there.

I loved it's small memory footprint and the simplicity of configuring it. I switched to Sygate from Norton. It's ironic that I might have to switch back.

Can anyone recommend any other firewalls for Windows or is Norton Firewall the best?

How risky is it to just keep using Sygate for my firewall?

[zaznet]

Loss of a great product.

Symantec is losing a great product in SPF. This is the type of product that helped draw customers in to Sygate and it could have done the same for Symantec. In a shrinking market (due to XP SP2 including a firewall) this is hardly the time to shrink their share of it even smaller.

[Yog Sothoth]

Exactly

Hardly the time......

[zepper]

Dittos

I have really liked using Sygate Personal as it does the job and seems to have less effect on my system than some others I've tried.
. It is also integrated with VCom's SystemSuite 5 and newer. I wonder what VCom is going to use for the next verson of SS? I'm fairly sure Norton won't license their firewall to a competing Utility Suite vendor...

.bh.

[r2d2d3d4d5]

No update in a year

It might be worth pointing out that SPF has not had an update in a year. I guess this has been on the cards for a while.

[zepper]

Perfection doesn't need improvement ;-)

You don't need to update a product that is working properly. I've also used Sygate for a long time. First as a stand-alone product and continuing with the version that is bundled with VCom's (http://www.v-com.com) SystemSuite 5 and newer.

,bh,

[Nunja Business]

They are keeping the wrong one!

After using Sygate Personal Firewall Pro for several years I have to say I have not seen a fraction of the problems that Norton Firewall has. I routinely see Norton suddenly "forget" settings and refuse access to programs that were allowed permanently. I have never seen that happen with SPF.

On another note, I hope (CEO) John Thompson's bonus isn't affected and the layoffs aren't too heavy!

[Xpheyel]

That sums it up!

What is this malarkey? I've been running Sygate on two computers for some time and had few or no problems with it. It seems lighter weight and managing application permissions is straightforward.

Meanwhile NIS is running on a third computer, and is more like a sequence of ugly wrappers and I'm never clear on what its doing. I've had frequent problems with its application management. Not to mention I have problems every time I try to upgrade it. There isn't even a comparison!

[Sparky650]

I agree

There will be no way I would put a Nortie system hog on my computer. Actully my new computer came with a free disc with Norton Firewall and the first thing I did on opening up the box was to throw that in the trash. Norton makes some system hog apps.

[TiVoJoe]

More cost effective

Let?s face it. It is easier to buy out the competition than it is to actually make a quality product that can compete. They are using the Microsoft business plan. I?m not saying Microsoft invented the buy out, they rarely invent anything. But they do seem to have perfected it.

[GraveDigger27]

Who's really the "evil empire" ?

It's not really the Microsoft business plan. It seems that Symantec really perfected it. Look at the company's history - time after time they acquired their competition, eliminated their product (and therefore reduced the features they would have to put in their own products), abandoned products all together, or failed to continue product development. Anyone remember Central Point Software? Ever used PC Tools for DOS, Windows or MacOS? Remember the Norton Desktop? How about the Norton Navigator. How much has PartionMagic improved since Symantec acquired it? Tried using Norton Anti-Virus or Systemworks with MacOS 10.4? Check out Symantec's web-site or the Wikipedia entry on the company to see how many companies have been acquired over the last decade. I think you'll find that Symantec has gobbled up most of it's competition and hasn't really looked out for the little guy as well as you might think.

[n3td3v]

Build your own firewalls

It's not as impossible as you may think. Go do a web search, you'll find information.

[zepper]

There are other free firewalls

Agnitum's Outpost free version comes to mind. And http://www.majorgeeks.com lists several more. Though I do wish Symantec would continue to keep the free version posted for those who want to DL it.
. But probably not as it would cut into sales of their bloatware...

.bh.

[n3td3v]

Do what I did

SET UP THE BIGGEST FIREWALL EVER! BUY YOUR OWN ENTERPISE CLASS ROUTER AND FIREWALL. L3333333T FOR RESEARCH FOR HACK KING YOUR FAVORITE DOT-COM. L3E3E3E3T!@!@!@!!@!@!@@!@@!@@@!!!!@@@!!!@@@!!!!!!

[kpfuser]

Antitrust Legislation Anywhere?

Isn't this the precise outcome that antitrust legislation is supposed to protect consumers from? As a user of Sygate Personal Firewall Pro, I feel utterly disgusted by the high-handed approach Symantec has taken in order to eliminate from the marketplace superior competition for its own bloated monster of a firewall. After the considerable amount of time spent to learn how to use SPFPro effectively and customize it for my particular surfing needs, it is of no comfort whatsoever to hear that there are still other firewalls available, much more so with the Symantec monster on the loose.

[thedreaming]

Knew it was coming

When I first read about Symantec buying them out, I knew it was only a matter of time. since symantec already had a firewall product, it made no sense to buy a company that makes the same product, unless you want to get rid of them as competitors.

[Sparky650]

Fat Wallets For Fat Software

Bloatware to th extreme the last time I used Norton products they used more resources than my program that was encoding video!

[HtmlMasterAL]

Predictable and pathetic

Symantec really has an inflated ego. It's sad enough that they truly believe their bloatware is the best on the market. Then they go and buy out one of the best free firewalls that consumers relied upon. Ok, but then they had to kill it? They couldn't make Sygate their new and better firewall, no, because that would prove theirs has been garbage all along. So, to save face, they scrapped it. Do companies like Symantec and Wal-Mart go to evil meetings in underground caves? Perhaps that is where they think this crap up. The worst part is that they now expect people to pay ridiculous prices for security software that good operating systems don't even need. Then you have to buy subscriptions, and buy updates, and pay..pay..pay..pay..pay.

[HtmlMasterAL]

Seriously?

I would not recommend this for anyone who does not have a good master's degree in computer science or computer security. Looking up some tutorials on making VB.NET security programs is not the answer.