Many years ago, when I joined the team at Symantec, one of the things that took me completely by surprise was the behavior of the scientific community of virus researchers. The Norton or Symantec virus researchers were in a group, at the time called SARC, or the Symantec AntiVirus Research Center. These brilliant computer scientists worked to unlock the secrets of new viruses, created definitions or solutions for our customers and then shared the information with their fellow researchers at all of our antivirus competitors. And those competitors did the same for us. It was the closest thing to a pure science environment I’d ever experienced in a commercial enterprise. Knowledge was and is paramount for a virus researcher.
I was the first product manager for a purely consumer version of our Norton AntiVirus product. Before my arrival we had sold one product to big companies as we did for individual consumers. It was still the early days of the computer virus story. So I had the privilege to work closely with the members of the SARC team who were always patient with me, helping me to learn the differences between types of malware, methods of transmission, and enabling me to communicate this to consumers. You’ve never met a nicer group of people.
For that reason, I was inordinately pleased to see this unsung group of heroes receive a little recognition in the form of a 9,000 word article on Wired magazine’s website about the discovery and research into the Stuxnet virus. Written by Kim Zetter, one of the magazine’s top scribes, the piece is a thriller, with cinematic twists and turns about the group she calls “digital detectives”. It’s incredibly fun to read and along the way, you’ll get to know some of the Symantec team that makes work here so great: Eric Chien, Liam O Murchu and Nicolas Falliere. Please read this article. Even if you don’t consider yourself to be a techy, it will educate, illuminate, and fascinate you. I wouldn’t be surprised if a movie is in consideration for the story. Now, who should play Eric, Liam and Nicolas?