It can go in, but it can't come out
While I'm not in the anti-virus group, Fast Company details what happens just down the hall from me. Symantec's Santa Monica division hosts one of Symantec's Security Response Centers. What they do is try to "catch" the latest infection and then quickly write a new signature to block the virus.
"This is the dirtiest of all of our networks at Symantec," says Martin, a senior product manager. "There are special firewalls that protect these machines." And by the door, there's a Hazmat box marked danger. It's for disposing of disks, tapes, and even hard drives, so any viruses they may contain aren't inadvertently released. Explains Martin: "No storage media ever comes out of this room. It can go in, but it can't come out."
The article explains what happens at the day's close. Detecting computer viruses is a 24 hour job. When the day's over in Santa Monica, work is passed on to Tokyo.
The day never ends for Symantec employees charged with outsmarting those bad actors. Every afternoon at 5 p.m., the crew in Santa Monica passes the baton to colleagues in Tokyo, meaning that they become responsible for new threats that appear--and for taking the lead on lingering older threats. "From 5:00 to 5:30, it's the U.S. team's job to brief the Tokyo team," Weafer says. "And in the second half of the hour, the Tokyo team is effectively in control, but they can draw on the U.S. team." At the end of the Japanese workday, Tokyo hands off to Dublin, and at 8 a.m. in California, the baton returns to Santa Monica.