Best Products of 2012: Internet Security Suite

Norton Internet Security 2013

Norton IS 2013 features a signature-based virus definition updation system. The silent mode can be used for suspending alerts to avoid interruption or slowing of games and movies. There is an added tool for data recovery which creates an emergency CD/DVD/USB upon threat detection. In the EICAR test, it completely removed all the test fi les which included DOS, .txt and compressed fi les. It took 20 minutes to scan the whole system and 4 min to scan the virus folder. The total number of threats uncovered was 48,395 with a success ratio of 96%. In the malicious sites test, Norton successfully blocked 47 sites. Meanwhile, the average CPU usage varied between 20-25% with 54% memory consumption.

Bottom-line: A quick, light and feature-rich Internet security suite.

MacAfee Internet Security 2012

In the EICAR test, it successfully removed all DOS and .txt fi les. While downloading the compressed fi les, it warned and suggested us to block the download. At the time of scanning, it completely removed the threat. McAfee was fast enough to scan the complete system in about 20 minutes and caught about 93% of the defects. It took another 4 minutes for uncovering the defects from the virus folder. It was able to block 46 malicious websites from opening up. The average CPU usage ratio (25-30%) was a bit higher as compared to that of Norton or Trend Micro Titanium. The memory consumption at 55% was almost on the same lines.

Bottom-line: Good Performance with website security and 1 GB online backup, makes it a good option to go with.