Symantec eCampus Offers Tech Training and Free Resources

Three things you won’t find at eCampus, Symantec’s new online education portal: keggers, homecoming, or pomp and circumstance. But what you will find promises to be a boon for time- and budget-strapped small business owners who want product-specific training or general information on security best practices.

At least that’s the goal, according to Lee Futch, a Symantec director of product management. “So many small business owners are, by necessity, multi-taskers, handling more than one job within the company. They often lack the time to go hunting for the information they need or the budget for product training.”

The idea behind eCampus, Futch says, is to aggregate affordable, fee-based Symantec product training and free resource information into one easy-to-find location.

Ecampus consists of five training centers, four of which are named for — and focus on — these specific Symantec programs:

• Enterprise Vault
  
• Backup Exec
  
• Control Compliance Suite
  
• Symantec AntiVirus

The fifth area, the Security Awareness Center, contains free, nonSymantec resources and information about general security issues and best practices. “This section helps small business owners understand how their behavior, and that of their employees, can impact company security,” says Futch.

Within each product center, you’ll find fee-based training modules that you can access in a variety of ways: self-paced Web-based training, CDs or live online Webcasts. You’ll also find free learning materials specific to the area’s Symantec product. These include white papers, Web casts, case studies, multi-media tours and pod casts.

For example, here’s a quick look at what you’ll find in the Symantec AntiVirus area. For tech training, the center offers 19 self-paced modules that run from basic through advanced. The first five modules are:

• Introduction to Symantec AntiVirus 10.2 for Microsoft Windows Vista
  
• Are My Systems Protected After a Migration/Upgrade to a New Version of Symantec AntiVirus?
  
• How to Recover a Failed Symantec Antivirus Primary Server
  
• Recommended Practice: Updating Virus Definitions
  
• Responding to Big-Impact Security Risk

Here’s an example of the types of free Web casts in the AntiVirus center:

• Endpoint Security and Compliance
  
• Stop Spam and Email-Borne Threats with Symantec’s New Hosted Mail Security Solution
  
• Planning a Symantec Client Security Deployment

The pricing for one-year subscriptions for the eCampus training centers range from $50 to $150 per person, depending on the product.

Lauren Simonds is the managing editor of SmallBusinessComputing.com