Inside the Symantec Security Response labs

Pictured here is the red zone, where Symantec researchers work, and which contains infected machines.

The Dublin response team is part of a global network: there are Symantec security response units in Calgary, San Francisco, Mountain View, Culver City, Pune, Taipei, Chengdu and Tokyo. Analysts monitor the internet and customer submissions, on rolling eight-hour shifts for possible pieces of malware.

Symantec receives approximately 60,000 submissions per month, leading to 2,000 manually coded antivirus definitions per month, produced by approximately 135 analysts globally. A network of anti-malware companies also collaborate to produce a "zoo" of 150,000 to 200,000 pieces of possible malware for which Symantec builds signatures, mostly automatically.