Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Management & Strategy

Symantec CEO to Step Down

Symantec on Thursday said that President and Chief Executive Officer Michael Brown will be stepping down as head of the security firm after a successor has been appointed.

A search is currently underway for the Company’s next CEO, and Brown will remain on board until a replacement has been appointed. 

Symantec on Thursday said that President and Chief Executive Officer Michael Brown will be stepping down as head of the security firm after a successor has been appointed.

A search is currently underway for the Company’s next CEO, and Brown will remain on board until a replacement has been appointed. 

Symantec Logo

With Brown stepping down, Symantec will be moving onto its fourth CEO in just four years. Brown was appointed CEO in September 2014, after former CEO Steve Bennett was terminated by the security company. Bennett took the top position at Symantec in July 2012, after his predecessor, Enrique Salem, was pushed out at the decision of the Board of Directors.

Brown joined Symantec’s board of directors following the company’s acquisition of Veritas Software in July 2005.

After completing the sale of its Veritas information management (IM) business to a group of investors led by the Carlyle Group early this year, Symantec has become a pure-play cyber security company. The sale gave Symantec roughly $5.3 billion in after-tax cash proceeds—$1 billion less than the company originally expected to receive from the sale.

Symantec orginally bought Veritas for roughly $13.5 billion. 

The company said it would continue on its strategy to deliver $400 million in cost savings over the next two years. 

Symantec also revised its guidance for its fourth quarter of fiscal year 2016, saying revenue is now expected to be $873 million compared to previous guidance of $885 to $915 million. 

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

“A shift in enterprise security customer buying preferences is resulting in less license revenue during the quarter and more revenue being deferred to future periods,” the company said. “This included a faster than expected shift within our product mix to subscription and ratable contract structures.”

Shares of Symantec (NASDAQ:SYMC) traded down nearly 7 percent to $16.86 at the market close on Thursday.

Written By

For more than 15 years, Mike Lennon has been closely monitoring the threat landscape and analyzing trends in the National Security and enterprise cybersecurity space. In his role at SecurityWeek, he oversees the editorial direction of the publication and is the Director of several leading security industry conferences around the world.

Click to comment

Trending

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Join the session as we discuss the challenges and best practices for cybersecurity leaders managing cloud identities.

Register

SecurityWeek’s Ransomware Resilience and Recovery Summit helps businesses to plan, prepare, and recover from a ransomware incident.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Application Security

Cycode, a startup that provides solutions for protecting software source code, emerged from stealth mode on Tuesday with $4.6 million in seed funding.

CISO Strategy

SecurityWeek spoke with more than 300 cybersecurity experts to see what is bubbling beneath the surface, and examine how those evolving threats will present...

CISO Conversations

Joanna Burkey, CISO at HP, and Kevin Cross, CISO at Dell, discuss how the role of a CISO is different for a multinational corporation...

CISO Conversations

In this issue of CISO Conversations we talk to two CISOs about solving the CISO/CIO conflict by combining the roles under one person.

CISO Strategy

Security professionals understand the need for resilience in their company’s security posture, but often fail to build their own psychological resilience to stress.

Management & Strategy

SecurityWeek examines how a layoff-induced influx of experienced professionals into the job seeker market is affecting or might affect, the skills gap and recruitment...

Cybersecurity Funding

2022 Cybersecurity Year in Review: Top news headlines and trends that impacted the security ecosystem