Good day, Today, SecurityFocus and Symantec announced that Symantec is acquiring SecurityFocus. Symantec sees real value in the services SecurityFocus provides to its customers and believes they are an excellent fit with their current offerings. We at SecurityFocus see this as an opportunity to provide even better services for the security community. Symantec recognizes the value and uniqueness of the public services SecurityFocus provides to the community, such as the numerous mailing lists we host and the content we provide via the SecurityFocus Online web site. In particular, Symantec and SecurityFocus want to ease any fears as to whether the character of this mailing list will change. Frequently Asked Questions: Q. What is the Symantec strategy for keeping data sources? A. We believe it is critical to maintain the integrity of the existing security community currently part of the SecurityFocus portal and Bugtraq mailing list. Q. What is Symantec's disclosure policy? A. Symantec believes in responsible vulnerability disclosure and is active in initiatives to set best practices in this area. Our first priority is to help our customers protect their computing assets by providing tools and information to safeguard their systems. We will work with vendors, if we discover vulnerabilities in other products, to report and investigate the issue in a thorough and timely fashion, in the same way that Symantec will work with other security researchers if they find an issue with any Symantec technology. We observe a 30-day grace period after the notification of a security advisory to give users an opportunity to apply the patch. During this grace period, we provide our customers significant information about the vulnerability and the fix, but not step-by-step instructions for exploiting the vulnerability. We do not provide detailed exploit code or provide samples of malicious code except to other trusted security researchers and in a secured manner. Q. Will Symantec change SecurityFocus' vulnerability reporting policy? A. We believe that in order for the SecurityFocus/Bugtraq community to be effective, it must be an independent entity. We believe that its current disclosure policy is appropriate for the venue. Symantec will continue to operate with its separate disclosure policy. Sincerly, Elias Levy, David Ahmad, and the rest of the SecurityFocus staff
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