Symantec, the software company known for its Norton security suite, is looking to move on from antivirus protection to create new techniques for outsmarting hackers.

The company that led with its antivirus software in the late 1980s will be reinvented with security measures that assume tricky hackers will get into a computer but aim to reduce the damage, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Antivirus "is dead," said Brian Dye, Symantec's senior vice president for information security, as quoted by WSJ. "We don't think of antivirus as a moneymaker in any way."

The industry to protect online security is worth some $70 billion a year, and major companies appear to be moving toward technology that accounts for hackers, who have become increasingly clever at breaking through firewalls.

Dye has been with Symantec for more than 10 years and hopes to bring the company back to the forefront after two quarters with falling revenue, WSJ reported.

"It's one thing to sit there and get frustrated," Dye said of watching other security companies forge ahead of Symantec. "It's another thing to act on it, go get your act together and go play the game you should have been playing in the first place."

While antivirus software has been blocking hackers for decades by spotting malicious code, the technique isn't working so well today because attackers keep creating new bugs. According to Dye, antivirus flags less than half of malicious software.

Norton users don't need to worry. The company will continue to offer the security suite, which watches for suspicious activity and includes safety measures such as a password manager, spam blocker and a tool that flags suspicious links on Facebook.

Symantec will next work on measures to help businesses who have been hacked, planning to offer intelligence briefings on specific types of malware as well as various technologies that distract hackers who make it past firewalls. 

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