Norton’s Internet Security Suite 

Not only are hackers on a constant lookout to ‘take over’ your machine, but there are also thousands of viruses that can compromise the data on your machine by corrupting it or executing malicious code. The Norton Internet Security 2001 (NIS) suite is meant to take care of these threats. It has two components–the Internet Security feature and the Norton AntiVirus component. 

Internet security

This consists of three sub-components–security, privacy, and ad blocking. The Security component allows you to configure the security settings for your machine. A slider (similar to the security slider in IE) can be used to set the security level at minimal, medium, or high security. You can also customize these security settings. This is where the Norton firewall comes in. A great feature here is ‘stealth unused ports’, which makes your machine’s unused ports invisible to external agents. You can also set the actions to be performed on Java applets and ActiveX controls. They can be ‘allowed,’ ‘prompted for’, or ‘denied’. Firewall rules are created automatically in case you run a program that accesses the Internet. And if this does not suffice, you can set up your own firewall rules. It’s quite easy to configure. We attacked it with various port scanners, but were not able to get through to the machine. 

Internet privacy

When you log on to the Internet, a lot of information about you is sent online to websites. When buying online, you’d be giving your credit-card information, or you could send someone a confidential e-mail. The privacy function of NIS 2001 allows you to determine which information will be allowed to go out of your PC. This can also be quickly set through a slider, or be customized. You can even block e-mail ids from going out (due to auto-fill feature of Web forms by IE). Another Web element that are an issue with privacy, are cookies. These are small files placed on your hard disk, which carry machine- and person-specific information and accessed by websites to keep track of visitors. NIS 2001 allows you to accept, deny, or be prompted to accept cookies. Any unknown cookies can hence be traced and prevented from accessing your system. If you set the software to prompt you for cookies, you’d be surprised and annoyed at the number of cookies that many websites send out to their visitors. 

Browser privacy

Your browser sends out information to the Internet, primarily for ‘identification’. This includes the user agent, browser version, details about your OS, shared resources, and uptime–sensitive informa- tion that can be used to hack your PC. But with Norton, a click on the ‘Browser privacy’ box ensures anonymous surfing. 

The ad-blocking feature is another useful feature that can prevent irritating ads from taking up precious bandwidth. However, ads made using non-standard techniques like Javascript are not stopped by default. To get rid of these, the NIS 2001 features a ‘Trashcan’. Just drag and drop any ad into the trashcan and it is blocked the next time when you are surfing. You can also modify the URL to make the blocking more generic as well as make ad-blocking a site-specific feature so that those on your favorite sites are not blocked. 

All statistics related to your connection can be monitored in real time. The ‘View Statistics’ button under Internet security shows it all–TCP and UDP connections, firewall rules processed, connection statistics, number of ads blocked and even the time saved by blocking those ads. NIS 2001 also maintains a log of events, which can be referred to in case of suspicious activity. 

Norton AntiVirus

Norton AntiVirus is integrated with this package to also give virus protection to your PC. Functions like on-demand scanner, e-mail scanner, task-based scanning, quarantine feature, reports, and scheduled scans are available. The Antivirus works along with the Internet Security feature. So, supposing a Java applet is ‘allowed’ through the firewall, it will be scanned for viruses before it is executed. This ensures maximum protection to your machine. 

Ashish Sharma at PCQ Labs