November 22, 2017
From Kenneth Ellman, email: <Removed>
Can the Norton VRQ Tool Documentation be obtained or purchased? Unfortunately as we know at times the Norton Security products and other competing products do not detect or resolve an attack. The VRQ Tool has been useful . Sometimes Norton Support uses the tool for customer.
The Norton India staff are not Engineers just Virus Removal Support. Some are good and some not so good.
It would protect many Norton Customers if more knowledge was available for the VRQ Tool and any other tool that can be used.
DOES Norton sell a VRQ Tool package for used by Business and others??
Has anyone prepared any Documentation for the VRQ Tool?
What other Tools similar to VRQ are available in the marketplace?
Feel free to contact me.
Thanks.
Kenneth Ellman
email: <Removed>
<Removed>
[Edit: Removed Email Address (PII) to confirm with Participation Guidelines & Terms of Service ]
Hi Ken,
VRQ Tool has never been nor will it ever be offered outside of Symantec. I do however think your use case is interesting. It is one I am aware of and hope to one day fill the gap between NPE and VRQ. That being said, VRQ is VERY capable of shooting a nice hole in your foot, so how we do this will be carefully considered.
This idea is still just that, an idea, so don't hold your breath. Just know, we are thinking of such things.
Thank you,
Jeff
I am told that Norton does sell this to some Customers
If someone has told you this, I would start by asking that person.
Employee Tony_Weiss told you before that it was an in house tool. What more do you want us mere users to say?
Kenneth,
I see a lot of qualified Malware Removalists start the process using FRST/64.exe (Fabar Recovery Scan Tool). Maybe that is worth investigating?
As regards Norton being a home user product this is not exactly so. Many small business used NORTON on their computers for protection . You have many small business, with multiple employees and five or ten computers that use Norton for protection. Nothing unusual about that. Some small business may only have ten or twenty employees and computers and have a designated computer support person who looks after such. They also do in house web design and have their own Server. These companies do in fact use Norton products which as you know are sold everywhere, to anyone and sometimes heavily discounted. Norton sells ten machine/multiple machine packages for consumer market all the time.
Again the VRQ Tool is a very good method to see what is going on in the machine. It would aid in protection of Norton Customers and it gives automatic feedback to Norton which is also important to Norton and Customers.
I am told that Norton does sell this to some Customers and if there is an Office at Norton or a Norton Partner who can provide such please let me know. Thank you very much.
Kenneth Ellman
keatkenneth:
1. The reply of "SendofJive" has nothing to do with my question....
Your question was "Can the Norton VRQ Tool Documentation be obtained or purchased?" The answer, from Symantec, was "This tool is not intended for general public use and has no documentation to support it."
And Tony pointed out in your previous post that this is an in house tool. So it is not available to the general public.
3. The question comes down to whether the Tools to protect business entities include the purchase option of products such as VRQ or other similar methods with training documentation so in house real Engineers and Support Staff can use it to protect their system/network.
Maybe if you are looking for tools like this, you need to contact a security consultant. They may be able to suggest, or supply some tools similar to the VRQ tool you are so interested in.
Kenneth Ellman :
This is of particular concern to the business community and larger base users who have their own staff of in house computer specialists.
Except Norton is a home user product, not a business product.
- SendOfJive posted a link to a post by @Tony_Weiss who definitely is a Symantec Employee.
From Kenneth Ellman in Reply to "SendofJive"and Peterweb
November 22, 2017
I made this Post to aid Customers who have found that the available protection tools have not been sufficient to deny access to malicious programs. Since we all know that the Malicious Program Protection Tools available from various producers do NOT give total protection the next step is Detection and then Removal of those attacks that have penetrated the protection programs.
This is of particular concern to the business community and larger base users who have their own staff of in house computer specialists.
1. The reply of "SendofJive" has nothing to do with my question. I did not know that "SendofJive" could speak for Norton. Are you a Norton employee.? Anyone familiar with the VRQ Tool knows it is not aggressive at all. It simply provides the information and then it is up to you to provide further instructions and use of the VRQ. The VRQ Tool only does what you instruct it to do, nothing more. It does provide significant information not easily available from other products on the market. It is a very easy to use Tool. It is a Information Gathering Tool that then allows the acquired information to be used as a Remediation Tool if you wish.
There are specific training manuals and instructions for use of the Tool. Such if made available to Norton Customers would aid protection to the community and reduce routine demands upon Norton Technical Support. This would be of advantage to Norton and its Customers. Norton specialists could then handle more serious problems. The persons employed by Norton in India who use VRQ are not "Engineers" . Business Users with large vulnerability and in house real Engineers and other Support Staff should have and need programs such as the VRQ to aid in using Norton Products. Even small users with 30 or so computers need to be able to immediately investigate attacks and institute remediation.
2. As far as the post by Peterweb again what does that have to do with my question. Perhaps Norton has not changed the policy described in the post of Tony Weiss. But you do not work for Norton do you, so how would you know?? Are you a Norton employee? If Tony Weiss or someone authorized by Norton wants to answer the question they can certainly speak for Norton.
3. The question comes down to whether the Tools to protect business entities include the purchase option of products such as VRQ or other similar methods with training documentation so in house real Engineers and Support Staff can use it to protect their system/network. Many people are familiar with Windows Internals/Windows Sysinternals and the work of Mark Russinovich and others. But VRQ is a simple approach that can be used without extensive professional training.
SO, if Norton can make such available to its Customers, it would help the Customers who need such Tools such as VRQ. It is simply a Sales and Customer Support Question for Norton as to what type of availability there is for Customer In House Engineering use.
If anyone has information regarding the above it is appreciated to hear from you.
Thank you.
Kenneth Ellman
I would say nothing has changed since your question was originally answered eight years ago:
Tony_Weiss:
Hi keatkenneth,
The VRQ Tool is an internal tool used to probe for potential infections. It does not use any virus definitions nor can it detect threats heuristically, and is intended for the sole use of a trained Symantec staff person in conjunction with an internal knowledgebase and other tools. This tool is not intended for general public use and has no documentation to support it.
I hope this answers your questions about the tool. Thanks!
https://community.norton.com/en/comment/1074223#comment-1074223
The VRQ tool sounds like a proprietary, in house tool to be used by Norton Support. There is no reason that Norton would produce a public manual for an in house tool.
It is probably a very aggressive tool that might cause more problems than it solves if used by by non professional malware removalists. If it were novice user friendly, it would be included in the retail Norton products.