BitLocker Drive Encryption vs. Symantec Encryption

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
BitLocker
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft's BitLocker is an endpoint encryption option.
$100
One Time Fee
Symantec Encryption
Score 9.9 out of 10
N/A
Regulatory compliance, data privacy concerns, and brand reputation often become powerful motivating factors for organizations to take advantage of encryption technologies. Organizations are challenged to protect their sensitive information and ensure compliance with limited resources. Symantec Encryption offers an integrated management platform to allow organizations to: Quickly deploy and manage their endpoint encryption solution from a single console Have the right…N/A
Pricing
BitLocker Drive EncryptionSymantec Encryption
Editions & Modules
Windows 10 Home
$100.00
One Time Fee
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BitLockerSymantec Encryption
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
BitLocker Drive EncryptionSymantec Encryption
Considered Both Products
BitLocker
Chose BitLocker
BitLocker Drive Encryption is much more reliable. We used McAfee drive encryption prior to moving to BitLocker Drive Encryption. While McAfee was useful, it's required pre-boot environment always fell out of sync with AD passwords, causing users difficulty to sign into their …
Chose BitLocker
BitLocker Drive Encryption solution offering is cheaper than the one that McAfee offers, it will help you with specific business concerns like "how many encrypted assets do I have?" it's easy to maintain, easy to deploy, and easy to track. It's best suited for companies that …
Chose BitLocker
This was formerly called Symantec PGP encryption. We selected BitLocker since this is what the University has deployed and is currently supporting. BitLocker has many advantages over Symantec PGP, as BitLocker is built-into all Windows computers. With PGP, this was a …
Chose BitLocker
I can't think of any alternative that I know of.
Chose BitLocker
Previously used TrueCrypt until vulnerabilities were discovered. Overall performance improved when going from TrueCrypt to BitLocker.
Chose BitLocker
Most other whole drive encryption tools are really not that easy to manage and come with big performance when compared to Bitlocker. Also, a lot of them don't use TPM which in my opinion gives you better protection.

As for Truecrypt which was what we were using before, it is not …
Chose BitLocker
There is not much alternative to Bitlocker, you may want to try self-encrypted disk, but for a business perspective, it is not as easy as Bitlocker to manage. Self-encrypted may be faster, but recovering data for a system administrator is a disaster.

There was more alternative …
Chose BitLocker
There really is no competition with disk encryption at least on a Windows platform. Most Microsoft OS's have bitlocker encryption available to them.
Chose BitLocker
BitLocker is a lot easier to enable. It's a simple flick of the switch inside Intune.
Symantec Encryption
Chose Symantec Encryption
Back in the day, Norton was one of the choices in the company; while now Symantec is being used as default in the global organization due to its advantages against the alternatives. Very briefly, Symantec provides more benefits especially when considered as a business-level …
Chose Symantec Encryption
Full Disk encryption solution for roaming users and key management. From an end-user perspective the product is very intuitive and easy to use. Leaving minimal footprint to the ultimate end user experience. And the integration with BitLocker is excellent. The best tool out …
Chose Symantec Encryption
We needed a tool to manage BitLocker and FileVault and this product does both. Also, we needed a product to manage our self-encrypting drives (OPAL drives) and things work great.
Chose Symantec Encryption
Symantec Endpoint Encryption allowed us to give customers the option of keeping their products in house for encryption. This allowed us to not use a cloud site as that would mean that some data is leaving the building. Even though security is done well in the cloud for the most …
Chose Symantec Encryption
We are in the process of evaluating BitLocker as a replacement to SEE to use in Windows 10 laptops since it is included with Windows.
Chose Symantec Encryption
The Symantec Drive Encryption product in our testing was the best in the encryption class of products. The management functionality and reporting was far and above any other product that we tested. Its ability to connect to Active Directory and the ability to push client …
Best Alternatives
BitLocker Drive EncryptionSymantec Encryption
Small Businesses
Bitdefender GravityZone
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Score 9.1 out of 10
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Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Bitdefender GravityZone
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Score 9.1 out of 10
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Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
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Score 8.2 out of 10
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Score 8.2 out of 10
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User Ratings
BitLocker Drive EncryptionSymantec Encryption
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(0 ratings)
8.9
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
BitLocker Drive EncryptionSymantec Encryption
Likelihood to Recommend
It can be used if you are already familiar with other Microsoft System Center tools, it will provide integration and it will be easy to use from an Administrator's perspective. However, if you want more detailed information related to the troubleshooting, specific fields, or data, it will not be that granular.
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We used this for our customers from car dealerships that dealt with credit histories, etc, through healthcare providers. It worked well to auto encrypt specific criteria. I would recommend to any company the use of Symantec Endpoint. From the ease of use for end users to the auto encrypt policies, this software is worth a try.
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Pros
  • It is fairly easy to use, from both a technician and users point of view. The install itself is pretty simple, and setup of the software is also fairly simple. For users, it is easy to use the software to encrypt the computer.
  • It doesn't seem to use a whole lot of system resources when the encryption is enabled on the computer. You shouldn't experience any slowness of the computer, other than the time it takes to first encrypt the computer.
  • It serves its main purpose very well, and that is to protect computers from intrusions/data breaches. It is particularly good for protecting computers that are accessing/storing sensitive/confidential data.
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  • We can manage and view the status of each client from a centralized server.
  • It sync passwords with the local Windows account so there are no additional passwords the user needs to remember.
  • Our help desk is able to use the One-time password feature if the passwords get out of sync and the user is locked out.
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Cons
  • Even if it's the best we tested, I think write performance could be improved. Maybe with dedicated hardware inside the TPM?
  • No integration with OS password is a shame as most others have it and it is Microsoft on Microsoft so they can probably do it better then anyone else and safer.
  • I wish they would support multiple passwords like FileVault on macOS. If it's a shared computer, you have to give the only password to Bitlocker to both users.
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  • User Interface
  • Global Management
  • Password Changes can be slow, and are confusing for end users. Perhaps a prompt to remind them to use their older credentials?
  • New users complain about slowness due to the first time encryption process. This is to be expected. A on-screen notification to the end user encryption is currently happening would be nice.
  • We require check-in every 60 days. Sometimes even though the device has been on the network the device fails to check in with the SEE manager.
  • Cannot manage disks once drives have been encrypted. This is a part of the design but annoying. We twice had to expand out-of-space drives and could not due to the encryption. We had to decrypt the entire drive and then re-encrypt to perform this task.
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Usability
Very easy to enable.
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No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Not good nor bad, BitLocker encryption is a symptom of our era, we need to protect ourselves and our data, BitLocker is a tool, as an IT we have to deal with it but it doesn't bring any benefit to my daily operations.
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No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
This was formerly called Symantec PGP encryption. We selected BitLocker since this is what the University has deployed and is currently supporting. BitLocker has many advantages over Symantec PGP, as BitLocker is built-into all Windows computers. With PGP, this was a commercial product that had to be installed on each machine. That product also was not as easy or intuitive to use as BitLocker, and there were also more issues/problems that occasionally occurred with PGP.
Read full review
Back in the day, Norton was one of the choices in the company; while now Symantec is being used as default in the global organization due to its advantages against the alternatives. Very briefly, Symantec provides more benefits especially when considered as a business-level solution.
Read full review
Return on Investment
  • Protects against data loss and theft, which can be very expensive if PII, SPI, PHI is involved. Fines for this type of loss can be very high, along with the costs of notification, and discovery.
  • Cost is included in Windows O/S, without needing additional licensing costs.
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  • Allows our helpdesk staff to help users who forget their encryption passhprase or need other help with things
  • Provides ease of mind for management with them knowing all devices are encrypted
  • Easy to use for our end users
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ScreenShots