Security specialist Symantec has launched in beta a major new version of its client antivirus solution, featuring enhanced protection with a new firewall, intrusion prevention, network access control (NAC) and behavioural threat protection technology.

Symantec Endpoint Protection 11.0 combines Symantec Anti Virus with a new rules-based firewall from Sygate and behavioural analysis technology that can proactively detect zero-day threats and works with existing signature-based capabilities to improve firms' defences, according to director of product marketing Matthew Lodge.

"It's all about the changing nature of threats – it's about more than antivirus now," Lodge added. "This is a substantial increase on the level of protection from previous versions, and it's all in a single engine, a single installation."

Symantec has also improved the management capabilities, with a single console that allows a truly integrated view of all endpoints, and is location-aware so it's possible to apply different policies depending on where the endpoint is located.

"We've done a lot of work on the user interface to make it easier to manage policies," said Lodge. "When you consider an organisation with 17,000 employees may have 90,000 endpoints, centralised management is so important."

The firm has also considered user feedback to reduce the size of the product so that its "memory footprint" is only a third of previous versions, and it will be rolled out with no increase in cost, Lodge added.

The product got a cautious welcome from analysts. Nigel Stanley of Bloor Research commented that it was a "natural evolution of the product" but that most antivirus vendors already employ behavioural analysis technology.

"If you're a Symantec customer this is a good opportunity to gain some new products," Stanley added. "But the trouble with buying a suite is whether you end up with best-of-breed or some products which aren't very good – Symantec needs to convince that it's worth the investment."

A full version of the solution is expected to be available in September.