Byline: Sherri Buri McDonald - Sunday, October 7th, 2012

SPRINGFIELD - Computer software firm

Symantec is spending $1.3 million to

create a "security operations center" at

the company's Springfield facility to

serve growing demand from its biggest

customers for storing sensitive data,

company officials said.

The center will handle highly sensitive

customer information, so center

employees will have to pass through

several security doors, including one with

a fingerprint or hand geometry scan,

company officials said.

Construction is expected to be

completed later this month or in

November, said Cris Paden, a spokesman

in Symantec's headquarters in Mountain

View, California. The highly secure,

3,364-square-foot windowless center -

officials aren't disclosing where it will be

in the Springfield facility - will have about

a dozen employees who will work in

shifts around the clock, 365 days a year.

Officials said they weren't sure how

many of those employees would be new

hires and how many might be

transferred from other jobs in

Springfield, or from other Symantec

sites.

Symantec's 1,170-employee Springfield

complex provides customer service

support for "enterprise customers" -

large businesses, universities,

government agencies and other

organizations - and performs a range of

back-office functions, such as finance

and information technology, for

Symantec's global operations. Over the

years, Symantec has shifted to or started

up in Springfield an ever-broadening

array of services.

The main function of the new security

center will be to back up sensitive data

for Symantec's enterprise customers,

said Paul Meijer, Symantec's senior

director of infrastructure operations in

Mountain View.

"Cybersecurity now - especially for

enterprises - is not so much about trying

to keep something bad from happening,"

Paden said. "It's not about building up a

brick wall around a building, or servers,

to make sure nothing can get in. That's

part of it. But another part is, if you do

get hit, have you backed up your

information? And is it accessible in a

quick and effective manner?"

Customers want reliable, effective back-

up systems and technology to ensure

secure financial transactions and

information exchange on the Web and

via "cloud" computing, he said.

Creating a security operations center in

Springfield was "a good fit," Paden said,

because "we've got a big presence up

there already for supporting our

enterprise customers."

"It speaks well for the folks in the

Eugene-Springfield area," he said. "This

stuff doesn't happen by accident. It had

to be a strategic decision. We had to put

it in a place where we felt it would be in

good hands."

Symantec's 400,000-square-foot

Springfield facility has plenty of space

and "in terms of cost it's a no-brainer,"

Paden said. "It's a little easier to build

things out in Springfield" than at

Symantec locations in California.

The Springfield security operations

center also will be a back-up for

Symantec's half-dozen other security

operations centers around the world,

including one in Mountain View, he said.

Employees who work in the security

operations center will need to pass a

criminal background check, as well as a

credit check "to make sure there's no

financial malfeasance in their

background," Meijer said.

The credit check would rule out

someone, for example, with a large

gambling debt, who might be tempted to

turn over customer information to

someone who promised to pay off that

debt, he said.

Just to gain access to the center,

employees will need to pass through

several sets of doors: one that reads a

magnetic badge, another which requires

the employee to enter a pin number and

another that, requires a "biometric"

check, such as a fingerprint or hand

geometry scan, Meijer said.

"We want to make sure that we're

treating the data the way that the

customer would want their own internal

people to treat it," he said.

Founded in 1982, Symantec built a name

for itself with its Norton antivirus

software. Over the years, it has acquired

expertise in Internet security, which has

become a major focus with the growing

trends of mobile devices and cloud

computing.

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