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Norton Internet Security Suite 2009

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

The big deal about this product is that it's must faster and easier to use,

something we'd forgotten existed in commercial anti-virus software and Internet

security suites. What does the magic in this version is a feature called 'Norton

Insight'. Using this, the suite maintains a log of the trust level of system

files and other related crucial files. Once these files have been labeled with a

trust level, they are not scanned the next time. Only when they're modified does

the software scan them again. This sort of tracking of files is also referred to

as white listing. This helps to significantly cut down the time required to scan

the syste. All processes related to this feature run when the system is idle,

thereby ensuring that the performance is not affected when the system being

used. This feature also provides a centralized location where you can view the

different processes running on the system, their trust levels and digital

signatures. Another interesting feature of the software is 'Silent Mode'. If

this is turned on, then any alerts or notifications will not be shown, but the

necessary action required will be taken. This way, users do not get any

disrutions while working. Apart from this, if any application like a movie or a

presentation is run in full screen mode, Norton itself enables silent mode.

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Price: Rs 2,115 (Single license); Rs

3,290 (3 licenses)



Meant For: Desktop & Laptop users


Key Specs: anti-virus, anti-spam, anti-phishing,
two-way firewall, white listing



Pros: Uses less system resources, easy to
use,



Cons: None


Contact: Vox PR, Delhi


Email: poonamt@voxpr.co.in


Website: www.symantec.com/en/in/index.jsp


SMS Buy 131195 to 56677






It also suspends certain background activities thereby not affecting the

performance. It starts them only when it detects that the system is idle.

The security suite provides a feature which protects the web browser from

malicious web sites. These web sites detect and exploit the browser to download

malware programs to your system.



These malware are sometimes also known as drive-by downloads. This feature is
available for I.E 6 or later and FireFox. After the feature is enabled, the

browser is then protected by Norton for attacks and maintains the system's

integrity.

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Norton Insight tells you how many files it has put in its white list. These

are then not scanned repeatedly, unless they're modified, thereby improving

system performance.

The identity safe feature protects a user's information during online

transactions. It can store log-in information, account numbers, passport

numbers, etc in password protected and encrypted format.

It also includes a firewall, which protects the system while it is

communicating with other systems over the Internet. It gives the user a choice

to control the programs that access the Internet. Users can also define rules

for a program for accessing net.

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Apart from this, it includes a network security map that enables a user to

monitor the status of other Norton protected systems connected through a

network. The stealth blocked ports feature blocks unused ports on the system and

it also blocks the ports from responding to incoming connection attempts. The

software also scans all incoming and outgoing traffic against a set of attack

signatures.

Norton provides a feature to monitor the memory consumed by itself and the

system. The yellow color shows memory being consumed by Norton.

The Anti-phishing feature safeguards you against fraudulent websites. A

warning is flashed if the website is detected to be fraudulent. This suite also

provides spam filtering. Norton anti-spam uses Bayesian technology to detect

spam mails. It can not scan mails that are sent through SSL connections. A user

can allow and block messages from individual e-mails or domains.

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Tests and results



For testing the software, we installed it on a Windows XP machine. For anti
virus testing, we scanned our virus database and it was able to detect almost

all viruses and clean/quarantine them. In fact, during scanning our virus

database, Norton deleted/quarantined maximum number of infections as compared to

2008 versionf of TrendMicro and McAfee.

To check the firewall capabilities we used an isolated network and ran

attacks through Nessus. The Norton firewall successfully blocked all attacks and

we could check this by referring to the logs maintained for scans and attacks.

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We tested the e-mail protection capability by trying to download virus

infected mails. The software raised an alert and did not allow us to download

infected mails. For spam mail testing we configured a mail account on Outlook

Express and downloaded a collection of spam mails. It was able to detect 39% of

spam mails with default settings. However, this percentage increases over time,

as the software learns over a period of time.

Resource consumption



Now comes the acid test--resource consumption. In this, we checked the memory
and CPU utilization, and compared it against its own previous release, and 2008

releases of TrendMicro and McAfee. The latest version of Norton outperformed

all, as can be seen from the graphs. It consumed the least amount of RAM and CPU

power during a scan. This result would be appreciated by most anti-virus users

because just about everyone today is suffering from the system hogging nature of

security suites. We tested RAM consumption using a utility called FreeRAM XP

Pro. Just as we were going to press, McAfee also released its 2009 suite of

products, so we didn't have time to compare its resource consumption here. We

hope to bring you its review in the coming issue along with a comparison.

Bottomline: Given the price, performance, and lower system resource

consumption, this is a great buy for endpoint security.

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