Norton Internet Security is the most popular antivirus software, it is developed by Symantec Corporation; the largest developer of computer security software products. In this article we would review the performance of Norton Internet Security.
Norton Internet Security includes a firewall, email spam filter, phishing protection and malware prevention and removal services.
It uses signatures and heuristics to identify and remove malware. Norton Internet Security comes in three different editions:
- Windows edition that has 12 different versions
- MAC edition with 2 versions
- Netbook version
And it is subscription based software.
Norton Internet Security 2000 was the first version released by Symantec on 10, January 2010. It had a powerful firewall that was capable of blocking packets at the packet level. This powerful firewall also enabled Norton Internet Security to block Active X and Java Applets.
Other features included cookie removal and banner ad blocking software. Symantec also released a family edition of Norton Internet security which had an additional feature of Parental control by which you can block any website. It had an already built it black list of sites, a user with administrator level privileges could add sites to the blacklist. Family edition also had an additional capability of blocking the transmission of sensitive information like passwords and PIN numbers.
Version 2001 or 2.5 was released on 18th September 2000. It was designed to support windows NT and 2000. This version had the ability of blocking malicious scripts without virus definitions, just by studying the behavior of the program. All the other features were same as found in the previous version including firewall and parental control. Symantec released version 5.0 or 2002 in August 2001.
It had some extra features like Norton Alert Tracker which warns users if a hacker is trying to gain access to computer. It also had an Intrusion Detection system that was developed to make this product more appealable to the business community.
Later on until April 2010 10 new versions of Norton Internet Security were released, each version added new features and increased the efficiency of the software by making it more reliable and robust. The latest stable version of Norton Internet Security is version 2010 or 17.0. Although two more versions have been released one on 21st April 2010 which is a beta version and another version was released on 9th December 2010 but it was found to be highly unstable by many users. The latest version, 17.0 has following features.
Version 17.0 introduced a new technology codenamed Project Quorum. This new technology came up with the concept of reputation based threat detection. According to Symantec there are almost 200 Million attacks every month and it is impossible to block all these attacks or contain these threats using a signature based detection technique. This new approach is based upon Norton Community Watch. Participants of this community send information about different applications running on their computers to Norton Community Watch.
Applications are then judged and categorized on basis of their attributes. SONAR 2 is another new feature that improves the performance of Norton Internet Security 17.0. It is an improved heuristics feature which influences reputation data to figure out if a program is malicious or safe.
The parental control feature has also been improved and now it is more effective and easy to use. Norton Insight feature has also been improved and a new feature codenamed Autopsy was also added. Autopsy helps user understand what action Norton took when a malicious program was found and how the threat was neutralized. Norton Internet Security also has the feature of safe search and a user using custom search feature can filter out unsafe sites, keep track of cookies and get insight on these sights from Norton Community Watch.
Norton Internet Security performed exceptionally well in blocking and removing malware. It successfully detected and blocked 98 percent attacks and also exhibited the ability to block commercial keyloggers. According to AV comparatives Norton Internet Security protected users from 99/100 threats.
The user interface of Norton Internet Security 17.0 is also very clean, sleek, simple and nicely laid out. On the left side of the user interface a CPU performance gauge is displayed. The middle coloumn is devided into three sections. The computer section shows the desktop operations, Network sections shows information about network and other computers and web sections briefs user about browser protection settings. The right coloumn shows configuration options for the sections present in center.
Another major improvement in user interface is the addition of "Flip Screen" feature. If this feature is activated, the main window flips over to show the backside of the main interface which shows a chart of CPU and memory usage and a timeline of security events. This feature requires a 3D card, if the card is not present the flip screen feature is replaced by a back link button which shows a new window to display that information. The only problem found in the user interface was of readability due to the black background.
Summing up the above information, the prime features of Norton Internet Security are:
- Antivirus
- Anti spyware (Learn more about anti spyware)
- Anti phishing
- Norton Safe Web
- Smart Firewall
- Bot protection
- Pulse Updates
- Anti spam
- Norton Reputation Service
- Identity Protection
- Parental Control Management (Learn more about parental control)
- SONAR Behavior Protection
- Network Mapping and Monitoring
- Anti Rootkit
According to the Norton performance comparison website, Norton Internet Security scans 31 percent faster, is 70 percent lighter, and installs 76 percent faster than the other leading Anti-virus products.