Tag Archives | Norton Internet Security

Good Grief, I Love Norton Internet Security 2011!

Posted by Steve Bass on September 23, 2010 at 2:14 pm

On March 21, 1991, I stopped using Norton’s security programs.

But I like to see what the dark side is up to, so I recently switched back to Norton. And I’m really happy I did.

Of course, knowing how you always like to hear the dirt, I’ll tell you the back story.

It was at the March 21, 1991 user group meeting that a Norton rep was showing off the company’s latest antivirus program. “Give these a spin,” I said, handing the guy doing the demo a floppy disk filled with live viruses.

Not an unreasonable request, I thought. But that’s just me.

He avoided making eye contact, wouldn’t look at the floppy, and said “no.” That’s it. To a roomful of 350 computer users. “No.”

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New Norton 360 Arrives as a Beta (and How’s Norton Treating You Lately?)

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 27, 2009 at 11:57 am

Norton 360

Last month, Symantec released Norton Internet Security 2010 and Norton Antivirus 2010, updated versions of its venerable Windows security packages. They incorporated a new approach to threat detection–Symantec calls it Quorum–which attempts to increase accuracy and reduce resource-hogging tendencies by gauging the reputation of files based on data collected from the millions of folks who run the company’s software. (The reputation of a core Windows file that didn’t do anything suspicious would be high; the reputation of a file which Quorum hadn’t seen before which appeared to be behaving in a dangerous manner would be low.)

Today, Symantec is releasing a free beta version of Norton 360 4.0, the next release of its suite which includes both security and management tools such as backup and PC tuneup tools. It’s the first version of Norton 360 with Quorum, and in conjunction with today’s releasing, Symantec is touting recent test results for Norton Internet Security 2010 from third-party labs. The UK-based Dennis Technology Lab tested ten security products and gave Norton alone a perfect score; it also did well in recent testing by AV-Comparatives.org and AV-Test.org. (I’m not an expert on the relative strengths of independent security labs’ testing techniques, but I know that AV-Test knows their stuff and tells it like it is–they’re the lab we worked with back when I was at PC World.)

Whenever I mention Norton security products, I’m used to PC users reflexively accusing them of being in-your-face annoying and sapping precious system resources to an absurd level. Symantec clearly heard the gripes, too–the changes in both last year’s Norton 2009 products and this year’s Norton 2010 ones emphasis a general reduction in intrusiveness, and much of the advertising is devoted to conveying that it’s changed its ways. But computer users have memories like elephants, and I suspect that some will continue to look askance at Norton for years to come even if Symantec’s cleaned up its act.

So here’s a question for folks who are running any 2009 or 2010 version of any version of Norton security: How’s it treating you?

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Symantec’s New Mac Security Suite: A Different Side of Norton

Posted by Harry McCracken on December 18, 2008 at 11:54 am

nortonformac Last week, I published the results of a little survey about Mac security that showed that the respondents, at least, are a pretty blasé bunch compared to their Windows-using friends. With the exception of firewall software–which comes built into OS X–the vast majority of survey respondents said they’re not running security software on their Macs, and don’t spend much time fretting about threats.

Symantec hopes that there’s a critical mass of Mac users who are security-minded enough to make its new Norton Internet Security 4 for Mac successful. The suite, which was announced today, is a Mac edition of a prominent Windows package. But Symantec has intelligently shifted the product’s emphasis when bringing it to OS X.