Former CEO Gordon Eubanks founded the company in 1982, and despite multiple growth spurts, it has remained in Cupertino ever since. The headquarters, located at 20300 Stevens Creek Blvd., houses the management for a company specializing in computer security with analysts and technicians in 36 countries worldwide.

Symantec has gained increasingly more exposure among computer users because of the company's widespread grasp on Internet viruses, especially with the recent Blaster worm and the SoBig virus finding their way to hard drives everywhere.

Oliver Friedrichs, a senior manager with Symantec Security Response, says, "It's been a busy few weeks."

The company, which is the number one computer security provider in the world, has a number of fail-safes to ensure the safety of computers everywhere. One is a vulnerability service that monitors possible flaws in operating systems and alerts Symantec customers so they can download the latest patches. Friedrichs says Symantec helped its customers patch the Microsoft Windows vulnerability revealed by that company on July 16—the same flaw in the system that creators of the recent bugs have exploited.

Symantec also employs an early warning system. Once analysts spot a virus making its way across global networks, they can oversee customers with Symantec software. "We monitor 20,000 firewalls worldwide, as well as the 120 million private machines that have Norton installed," he says. "We have a global view of the attack."

Many of those computers began feeling the effects of the most recent viruses just days after the Windows vulnerability was revealed. "We have a digital management system that allows users to submit samples, so we knew this was happening early on," Friedrichs says.

At the height of the Blaster worm on Aug. 11, computers running Windows 2000 or XP would likely get infected within just a half-hour on the Internet. Additionally, the SoBig virus replicated itself through millions of junk emails.

Between protecting subscribers and publishing removal tools and information for free on its website, Symantec found itself quite busy. Universities' systems and other large systems were compromised by these latest threats. But with a network of resources around the globe, Symantec's operations didn't take a rest after dark in California. "We have analysts around the world," Friedrichs says. "We're already a 24/7 operation."

He also says that these latest problems have not been the worst Symantec has seen. In 2001, the Code Red virus took down whole networks and routers, greatly disrupting Internet traffic and costing millions of dollars. As troublesome as the recent bugs have been, none have reached that level.

The company is still dealing with the after effects of the two latest attacks, but computer users are getting smarter about installing personal firewall software and other antivirus programs.

With such widespread popularity, it's inevitable that the company will once again become the savior of disabled computers everywhere. "This certainly isn't the last time something like this is going to happen," Friedrichs says.