Antivirus Antispam software review

Symantec - Balancing Data Protection and System Recovery

Symantec Backup Exec™ System Recovery  Windows Small Business Server Edition is the gold standard in complete Windows® system recovery with the ability to restore systems in minutes, not hours or days, even to dissimilar hardware or virtual environments. Now includes flexible offsite protection, enhanced recovery capabilities, and integration with Symantec security and systems management solutions. Click Here

No matter how up-to-date your desktops and servers are, data loss and system crashes are inevitable. And no matter what the cause, when vital business information isn’t available, every minute down costs you money. That’s why you need to have a data protection and system recovery strategy that gets you back up and running within minutes, not hours or days.

This article looks at what small and midsize businesses need to do to rapidly and confidently back up and recover vital data and systems.

Every business has unique information protection and disaster recovery challenges. But organizations of all sizes face the same issues when it comes to keeping their data protected and available.

For one thing, consider the growth of corporate data. By numerous accounts, the amount of data that needs to be protected is growing at a rate of 50% per year. For small and midsize businesses, the challenge of backing up this data and recovering it quickly is proving more onerous than ever.

At the same time, Microsoft Exchange has become a mission-critical application for many companies. Today, various reports estimate that the majority of a typical company’s intellectual property is contained in email. It’s not surprising, then, that keeping this application highly available and protecting the associated data is not an option, but a critical necessity.

The objective of traditional backups is to minimize the downtime of the messaging environment while providing the fastest possible data recovery in the event of a system crash, database corruption, loss of a mailbox, or other data loss. This is primarily accomplished through full or incremental online backups of the Exchange databases. But as data volumes grow, so does the backup window, which leaves a company at risk of data loss. Also, if organizations need to restore individual email messages or mailboxes, a separate Exchange mailbox backup is required to restore an individual item without recovering the entire Exchange database, which is twice the backup time and twice the storage space.

Symantec Backup Exec for Windows Small Business Server eliminates the need to run daily full or incremental Exchange backups with continuous data protection, which backs up data continuously as it changes, eliminating the backup window. It also eliminates the need to run slow Exchange mailbox backups while still allowing the recovery of individual email messages, folders, and mailboxes through Granular Recovery Technology (GRT). As a result, not only can Exchange be continuously backed up while online, but individual messages and mailboxes can be recovered in seconds.

When organizations think of backup and recovery, it’s usually about protecting information residing on a server. It’s important to remember, however, that both data and system information are at stake. Too often, so much importance is put on protecting the data that the system is overlooked. But if the system isn’t operable, the chances of accessing the data are slim. When a server operating system fails, it can take hours (days, in some instances) to rebuild and restore the server.

There’s also the matter of having to replace the server hardware. Most small and midsize organizations can’t afford the luxury of maintaining extra server hardware in case they need to replace an existing system. This introduces the issue of restoring a system to different hardware, while trying to preserve the integrity of the system state and the availability of the data.

Today, all systems – from servers to desktops to laptops – must be quickly recoverable, whether it’s to the exact same hardware or to completely dissimilar hardware.

Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery Windows Small Business Server Edition allows businesses to recover from system loss or disasters in minutes—even to dissimilar hardware platforms, virtual environments, or in remote, unattended locations. Backup Exec System Recovery – a complementary, standalone solution to Backup Exec for Windows Small Business Server – captures a recovery point of the entire live Windows system without impacting productivity. When systems fail, you can quickly restore them without the need for lengthy manual processes.

Symantec Backup Exec and Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery are now integrated with Symantec’s recently updated ThreatCon global security alerting system. The Symantec ThreatCon is an interactive tool that alerts users to the current state of global Internet security. (The current ThreatCon level is displayed on www.symantec.com.) A free service, it provides users with information that can help protect them against a wide range of vulnerabilities and threats.

The integration of ThreatCon alerts with Backup Exec and Backup Exec System Recovery means that businesses can automatically run a backup when the ThreatCon level reaches or exceeds a specified level. The ability to proactively back up data and systems based on the threat landscape helps ensure businesses can easily restore their environment to the point-in-time before the virus or threat infected their network, thus reducing the overall risk of downtime.

All businesses need their critical data and systems to be protected and available. But given the exponential growth of corporate data, as well as the rapidly escalating cost of system downtime, the challenges facing small and midsize businesses are more acute than ever.

Today’s solutions must offer best-of-breed data protection and system recovery. Businesses can’t afford to waste valuable time and resources restoring a complete data volume or database when all a user needs is a single file or email message. Likewise, they need assurance that expensive system downtime is kept to an absolute minimum.

Symantec coupons and discount 

 
Save $5 on Norton AntiVirus 10.0 for Macintosh when purchased via the US store! Click Here

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avassr.blogsome.com

Symantec Norton 360 v 3.0 features

New Features

• New! Ultra Fast and Super Light Performance - Norton 360 Version 3.0 is a fast and light, all-in-one PC protection solution. It delivers industry-leading protection for your PC and all your online activities while using significantly fewer system resources, so it won’t slow you down.
• New! Norton Safe Web - identifies unsafe Web sites and suspicious sellers so you can surf and shop with confidence.
• New! Norton Pulse Update - provides continuous, non-stop protection against new threats automatically during your subscription period.
• Improved Norton Identity Safe - protects your identity when you buy, bank, and browse online.
• Improved Password Manager - automatically detects, stores, and secures logins and passwords so you can have highly secure passwords without ever having to remember them again.

tursun.blogspot.com

from cnet.com

• The good: Norton Internet Security 2009  has a leaner footprint, improved speed, white listing and other technologies to mark clean files as trusted, and free technical support.
• The bad: Despite its free telephone support, Norton Internet Security 2009  lacks adequate online technical support and, either intentionally or not, drives users to its paid technical support services.
• The bottom line: Norton Internet Security 2009  hits all the right security notes and its superior protection technologies might even win back some jaded anti-Symantec folks, though for some technical support may continue to frustrate

Specifications:

• License qty: 3 PC in one household ;
• License type: Complete package ;
• Min Operating system: Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic , Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2 , Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition SP2 , Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium , Microsoft Windows Vista Business , Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate , Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition SP2 ;

Symantec has been listening to its users, and this year the company delivers a slimmed-down and faster Norton Internet Security 2009 . The suite of tools packs in the kinds of features people want most in an Internet security suite including some forward-looking technology. Almost all the security vendors have recognized the changing threat landscape and have rethought traditional protection. We especially like the Insight feature, which identifies "trusted" files and applications and doesn’t waste time rescanning and rescanning them unless there’s been a change. No other product does this. The redesigned logic behind Norton Internet Security 2009  clearly shows in CNET performance testing: it is faster and considerably lighter than last year’s version, and even some standalone 2009 antivirus applications. And Norton continues to win awards in third-party effectiveness testing. Lagging behind, though, is Symantec’s technical support. While Norton users now have free telephone support, Symantec still doesn’t provide enough of a knowledgebase, or even an adequate user’s manual. Once again, this year it emphasizes its premium services a bit too much. That said, Norton Internet Security 2009  presents a remarkable transformation of a product and is worth a second look.

Installation

On our test system we downloaded the 58MB final build of  Norton Internet Security 2009  and installed the product within a minute. Instead of relying upon Microsoft’s installer, which Symantec has blamed for much of its past product bloat, the company started over, designing its own installer. There is the added advantage that as criminals target MSI files (say to prevent you from installing a security defense product on your already compromised machine) Symantec won’t be affected–for now. The new installer process works fast, borrowing streaming technology from its Norton Ghost product. Symantec says installation takes less than a minute, and they were right. On both Windows Vista and Windows XP test machines, we were up and running in one minute and without a reboot.

Should you want to uninstall, Norton Internet Security 2009  includes an uninstall option. In the past, Norton left a mess. Now, after rebooting our machine, what is left behind is licensing information.

Interface

Speaking of a mess, we didn’t like last year’s Halloween colors on the user interface. This year’s redesign is much cleaner and more sophisticated, one befitting a major security product, and the colors used on the Interface can be changed if you want. Also gone are the tabs reminding you that you can purchase other Norton products. Specific tools can be turned on and off easily without diving into the configuration settings. The configuration settings page itself is always one click below the main page. The interface also offers a pop-up dialogs to explain specific terms, although thorough explanations of the choice users have in changing the settings is still lacking.

In the lower left-hand panel are two bar graphs representing the overall Windows resources used and one for the specific resources used by the Norton product. Compared with the resources used reported within the Task Manager in Windows, we noticed a slight synch problem between what Windows reported and what Norton reported for the overall system. Symantec confirmed that while Norton Internet Security 2009  is looking at the Windows Task Manager, it is doing so at different intervals. We like the transparency, and think the presentation here is better than the line graphs used in some other security applications. Should you want line graphs, an icon will reveal how the system and Norton CPU usage has been since the system was last rebooted.

Features

Norton Internet Security 2009  has, in the recent past, included some sophisticated technology from its enterprise products, which is good because it’s cutting-edge, but it’s also bad, because it doesn’t necessarily integrate with the product, nor is it necessary. In Norton Internet Security 2009  , they seem to have found the right balance.

Whitelisting, the buzzword of security products for 2009, is included within the new suite, and by marrying it with other technologies, Symantec makes it more suited for the user. Files on a whitelist are deemed trusted, and thus do not need to be scanned as often. Not all "safe files" make it onto the whitelist. For those, Norton Internet Security 2009  uses a community process, called Insight, similar to that used by other security products such as Haute Secure. The thinking is that if thousands of other people are using this suspicious file, chances are it’s not a new piece of malware but a new application. On the other hand if only a few are using it, then maybe it’s worth it to take another look to see if it’s malware.

Norton Internet Security 2009  enhances its home network monitor, giving you a system administrator’s perspective on the relative health and security of all the computers within your home.

And Norton Internet Security 2009  brings back the concept of the Recovery Disk once popular in the early 1990s, but declines to include a backup solution (you’ll have to buy another Symantec product for that).

Gone is the awful LiveUpdate component of past Norton products. With 2009 products, Symantec is providing antimalware definition signatures every few minutes or so. On the interface you’ll see a notice indicating how many minutes since the last update. We didn’t see definitions older than four minutes in our testing.

Missing still are the various security utilities provided in other products, namely McAfee Total Protection. We would like to see, for instance, a secure file eraser or the ability to trace potentially malicious IP addresses within Norton Internet Security 2009 . Nor is there any mobile-specific security solution provided within Norton Internet Security 2009 .

Performance

In CNET Labs’ performance tests, Norton Internet Security 2009 , as a suite, scored better than some standalone antivirus applications on our test Windows XP systems. In third-party, independent antivirus testing using live viruses, Norton products have scored in the upper ranks, although not always in the top position. On the CNET iTunes test, Norton Internet Security 2009  scored close to the test system result at 272 seconds, 3 seconds faster than the standalone version of Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2009. On the CNET Microsoft Office test, Norton Internet Security 2009  finished at a respectable 1,443 seconds, placing near the middle. In a test scanning a single folder with compressed and media files, Norton Internet Security 2009  came in at 202 seconds, which was the upper end of middle. In terms of boot speed, once again Norton came in fast at 33 seconds.

To find out how we test antivirus (and now Internet Security suite) software, see CNET Labs’ How we test: Antivirus software page.

In terms of how well Norton Internet Security 2009  will protect your PC, we cite results for Norton Antivirus from two leading independent antivirus testing organizations. In the latest test results from AV-Comparatives.org, for on-demand scans Norton Antivirus 2008 earned an Advanced + (highest) rating, catching 97 percent of all malicious software tested. However, for the Retrospective/Proactive test, Norton Antivirus 2008 earned an Advanced rating,with Norton falling behind the others, proactively blocking only 18 percent of the "new samples" in the test. From CheckVir.com, Norton Antivirus 2008 received its Standard award.

In antispyware testing on CNET, Norton Antivirus 2008 scored in the upper half of our top 10.

Support

Symantec has dropped its overinflated per-call pricing schemes of the past; all regular telephone technical support calls are finally free. That’s good. But its online manual and knowledgebase could be more robust, and an in program link to its community forums would be wise.

To take advantage of the free offerings, Symantec encourages users to use its One Click Solutions self-diagnosis tools first; that’s understandable since common problems can be self-remedied. In our tests, however, after answering no to "Does this resolve your problem?" we still didn’t get a telephone number, but an online form. Only after supplying a first name, last name, e-mail address, and phone (information you previously gave when setting up your Norton Account; why the two can’t be linked is unclear) are you offered a help ticket along with an option for a free online chat, free technical support phone, or an e-mail address. Once contacted, a technician may remotely control your PC while you watch them solve your given problem.

Our first encounter with Symantec’s technical support ended in frustration. Prominent on the technical support page and competing for prime eyeball space are Symantec’s premium technical support services: Spyware and Virus Removal (prices range), PC Checkup Service ($29.99), Green PC Service ($14.99), and PC TuneUp ($69.99). These premium services are also mentioned when you call for technical support. But in subsequent testing, we found neither the call nor the chat technician tried to steer us toward these premium solutions. Of course that depends on what specific problem you have and which technician you get.

The Norton in-program Help is better than in past years. Within the Help file, more terms are explained and less jargon is used this year, but it’s still not as thorough as other Help documents we’ve seen in competing products. And user options when changing configuration settings, long the bane of this reviewer, are once again not adequately presented to the end user: you still have to trust Symantec’s opinion on many things.

And the 38-page online manual, although indexed, is not very comprehensive, and leans heavily toward installation and the creation of the Recovery Disk. Only by accessing the Symantec Web site do you see the free community forums. That’s a mistake. Despite the company response that the Norton community forum is still in beta, these open communities provide more technical support than the canned responses offered through Symantec’s One Click Solutions process.

Conclusion

Norton Internet Security 2009  hits all the right security notes and its award-winning protection technologies should start to win back even jaded anti-Symantec folks. We love its sleek build, performance speed, and array of quality security tools. Our only fault remains with the products lackluster online consumer technical support.

vensp.blogspot.com

tenebril.blogsome.com

For a limited time only Symantec has dropped the price on Norton Internet Security™ 2009.

Norton Internet Security™ 2009, the fastest and most up-to-the-minute security suite available, protects against all types of online threats. It safeguards your computer, identity, and home network without slowing you down. Completely reengineered, it sets a new standard for speed and makes online shopping, banking, and browsing safer and more convenient than ever.

Key Features:

• NEW! Proven fastest security suite available - Spend more time using your computer and less time waiting for your security software to perform. More info
• NEW! Pulse updates for up-to-the-minute protection - Delivered every 5 to 15 minutes to detect and eliminate new threats
• NEW! Intelligence-driven for faster, fewer, shorter scans - By leveraging a unique online intelligence system, Norton™ Insight targets only those files at risk

*Price reduction is available for a limited time only set to expire on January 1, 2008. Symantec retains the right to make price changes without giving notice.

antivirusantispam.blogsrc.com

from cnet

Installation

On our test system we downloaded the 58MB final build of Norton Internet Security 2009  and installed the product within a minute. Instead of relying upon Microsoft’s installer, which Symantec has blamed for much of its past product bloat, the company started over, designing its own installer. There is the added advantage that as criminals target MSI files (say to prevent you from installing a security defense product on your already compromised machine) Symantec won’t be affected–for now. The new installer process works fast, borrowing streaming technology from its Norton Ghost 14.0 product. Symantec says installation takes less than a minute, and they were right. On both Windows Vista and Windows XP test machines, we were up and running in one minute and without a reboot.

Should you want to uninstall, Norton includes an uninstall option. In the past, Norton left a mess. Now, after rebooting our machine, what is left behind is licensing information.

Interface

Speaking of a mess, we didn’t like last year’s Halloween colors on the user interface. This year’s redesign is much cleaner and more sophisticated, one befitting a major security product, and the colors used on the Interface can be changed if you want. Also gone are the tabs reminding you that you can purchase other Norton products. Specific tools can be turned on and off easily without diving into the configuration settings. The configuration settings page itself is always one click below the main page. The interface also offers a pop-up dialogs to explain specific terms, although thorough explanations of the choice users have in changing the settings is still lacking.

In the lower left-hand panel are two bar graphs representing the overall Windows resources used and one for the specific resources used by the Norton product. Compared with the resources used reported within the Task Manager in Windows, we noticed a slight synch problem between what Windows reported and what Norton reported for the overall system. Symantec confirmed that while Norton Internet Security 2009  is looking at the Windows Task Manager, it is doing so at different intervals. We like the transparency, and think the presentation here is better than the line graphs used in some other security applications. Should you want line graphs, an icon will reveal how the system and Norton CPU usage has been since the system was last rebooted.

Features

Norton has, in the recent past, included some sophisticated technology from its enterprise products, which is good because it’s cutting-edge, but it’s also bad, because it doesn’t necessarily integrate with the product, nor is it necessary. In Norton Internet Security 2009 , they seem to have found the right balance.

Whitelisting, the buzzword of security products for 2009, is included within the new suite, and by marrying it with other technologies, Symantec makes it more suited for the user. Files on a whitelist are deemed trusted, and thus do not need to be scanned as often. Not all "safe files" make it onto the whitelist. For those, Norton uses a community process, called Insight, similar to that used by other security products such as Haute Secure. The thinking is that if thousands of other people are using this suspicious file, chances are it’s not a new piece of malware but a new application. On the other hand if only a few are using it, then maybe it’s worth it to take another look to see if it’s malware.

Norton enhances its home network monitor, giving you a system administrator’s perspective on the relative health and security of all the computers within your home.

And Norton Internet Security 2009  brings back the concept of the Recovery Disk once popular in the early 1990s, but declines to include a backup solution (you’ll have to buy another Symantec product for that).

Gone is the awful LiveUpdate component of past Norton products. With 2009 products, Symantec is providing antimalware definition signatures every few minutes or so. On the interface you’ll see a notice indicating how many minutes since the last update. We didn’t see definitions older than four minutes in our testing.

Missing still are the various security utilities provided in other products, namely McAfee Total Protection. We would like to see, for instance, a secure file eraser or the ability to trace potentially malicious IP addresses within Norton Internet Security 2009 . Nor is there any mobile-specific security solution provided within Norton Internet Security 2009.

Performance

In CNET Labs’ performance tests, Norton Internet Security 2009, as a suite, scored better than some standalone antivirus applications on our test Windows XP systems. In third-party, independent antivirus testing using live viruses, Norton products have scored in the upper ranks, although not always in the top position. On the CNET iTunes test, Norton Internet Security 2009  scored close to the test system result at 272 seconds, 3 seconds faster than the standalone version of Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2009. On the CNET Microsoft Office test, Norton Internet Security 2009  finished at a respectable 1,443 seconds, placing near the middle. In a test scanning a single folder with compressed and media files, Norton Internet Security 2009  came in at 202 seconds, which was the upper end of middle. In terms of boot speed, once again Norton came in fast at 33 seconds.

To find out how we test antivirus (and now Internet Security suite) software, see CNET Labs’ How we test: Antivirus software page.

In terms of how well Norton Internet Security 2009 will protect your PC, we cite results for Norton AntiVirus 2009 from two leading independent antivirus testing organizations. In the latest test results from AV-Comparatives.org, for on-demand scans Norton Antivirus 2008 earned an Advanced + (highest) rating, catching 97 percent of all malicious software tested. However, for the Retrospective/Proactive test, Norton Antivirus 2008 earned an Advanced rating,with Norton falling behind the others, proactively blocking only 18 percent of the "new samples" in the test. From CheckVir.com, Norton Antivirus 2008 received its Standard award.

In antispyware testing on CNET, Norton Antivirus 2008 scored in the upper half of our top 10.

Support

Symantec has dropped its overinflated per-call pricing schemes of the past; all regular telephone technical support calls are finally free. That’s good. But its online manual and knowledgebase could be more robust, and an in program link to its community forums would be wise.

To take advantage of the free offerings, Symantec encourages users to use its One Click Solutions self-diagnosis tools first; that’s understandable since common problems can be self-remedied. In our tests, however, after answering no to "Does this resolve your problem?" we still didn’t get a telephone number, but an online form. Only after supplying a first name, last name, e-mail address, and phone (information you previously gave when setting up your Norton Account; why the two can’t be linked is unclear) are you offered a help ticket along with an option for a free online chat, free technical support phone, or an e-mail address. Once contacted, a technician may remotely control your PC while you watch them solve your given problem.

Our first encounter with Symantec’s technical support ended in frustration. Prominent on the technical support page and competing for prime eyeball space are Symantec’s premium technical support services: Spyware and Virus Removal (prices range), PC Checkup Service ($29.99), Green PC Service ($14.99), and PC TuneUp ($69.99). These premium services are also mentioned when you call for technical support. But in subsequent testing, we found neither the call nor the chat technician tried to steer us toward these premium solutions. Of course that depends on what specific problem you have and which technician you get.

The Norton in-program Help is better than in past years. Within the Help file, more terms are explained and less jargon is used this year, but it’s still not as thorough as other Help documents we’ve seen in competing products. And user options when changing configuration settings, long the bane of this reviewer, are once again not adequately presented to the end user: you still have to trust Symantec’s opinion on many things.

And the 38-page online manual, although indexed, is not very comprehensive, and leans heavily toward installation and the creation of the Recovery Disk. Only by accessing the Symantec Web site do you see the free community forums. That’s a mistake. Despite the company response that the Norton community forum is still in beta, these open communities provide more technical support than the canned responses offered through Symantec’s One Click Solutions process.

Conclusion

Norton Internet Security 2009  hits all the right security notes and its award-winning protection technologies should start to win back even jaded anti-Symantec folks. We love its sleek build, performance speed, and array of quality security tools. Our only fault remains with the products lackluster online consumer technical support.

All Symantec Products:

Norton 360

Norton AntiBot

pcAnywhere 12.1

Norton Ghost 12.0

Norton Ghost 14.0

Norton Confidential

Norton AntiVirus 2009

Norton AntiVirus 2008

Norton 360 Version 2.0

Norton Smartphone Security

Norton AntiVirus 11 for Mac

Norton Internet Security 2009

Norton SystemWorks Basic 12.0

Symantec pcAnywhere 12.1 Host

Norton SystemWorks Standard 12.0

Norton Confidential for Macintosh

Norton SystemWorks Premier v 12.0

Norton Personal Firewall 3.0 for Macintosh

Norton Internet Security 3.0 for Macintosh

tursun.blogspace.cc

Norton Internet Security 2009

Symantec has been listening to its users, and this year the company delivers a slimmed-down and faster Norton Internet Security 2009. The suite of tools packs in the kinds of features people want most in an Internet security suite including some forward-looking technology. Almost all the security vendors have recognized the changing threat landscape and have rethought traditional protection. We especially like the Insight feature, which identifies "trusted" files and applications and doesn’t waste time rescanning and rescanning them unless there’s been a change. No other product does this. The redesigned logic behind Norton Internet Security clearly shows in CNET performance testing: it is faster and considerably lighter than last year’s version, and even some standalone 2009 antivirus applications. And Norton continues to win awards in third-party effectiveness testing. Lagging behind, though, is Symantec technical support. While Norton users now have free telephone support, Symantec still doesn’t provide enough of a knowledgebase, or even an adequate user’s manual. Once again, this year it emphasizes its premium services a bit too much. Were it not for several lingering concerns about its technical support policies, we were prepared to give Norton Internet Security 2009 a higher score.

Installation

On our test system we downloaded the 58MB final build of Norton Internet Security 2009 and installed the product within a minute. Instead of relying upon Microsoft’s installer, which Symantec has blamed for much of its past product bloat, the company started over, designing its own installer. There is the added advantage that as criminals target MSI files (say to prevent you from installing a security defense product on your already compromised machine) Symantec won’t be affected–for now. The new installer process works fast, borrowing streaming technology from its Norton Ghost product. Symantec says installation takes less than a minute, and they were right. On both Windows Vista and Windows XP test machines, we were up and running in one minute and without a reboot.

Should you want to uninstall, Norton includes an uninstall option. In the past, Norton left a mess. Now, after rebooting our machine, what is left behind is licensing information.

Interface

Speaking of a mess, we didn’t like last year’s Halloween colors on the user interface. This year’s redesign is much cleaner and more sophisticated, one befitting a major security product, and the colors used on the Interface can be changed if you want. Also gone are the tabs reminding you that you can purchase other Norton products. Specific tools can be turned on and off easily without diving into the configuration settings. The configuration settings page itself is always one click below the main page. The interface also offers a pop-up dialogs to explain specific terms, although thorough explanations of the choice users have in changing the settings is still lacking.

In the lower left-hand panel are two bar graphs representing the overall Windows resources used and one for the specific resources used by the Norton product. Compared with the resources used reported within the Task Manager in Windows, we noticed a slight synch problem between what Windows reported and what Norton reported for the overall system. Symantec confirmed that while Norton Internet Security 2009 is looking at the Windows Task Manager, it is doing so at different intervals. We like the transparency, and think the presentation here is better than the line graphs used in some other security applications. Should you want line graphs, an icon will reveal how the system and Norton CPU usage has been since the system was last rebooted.

Features

Norton has, in the recent past, included some sophisticated technology from its enterprise products, which is good because it’s cutting-edge, but it’s also bad, because it doesn’t necessarily integrate with the product, nor is it necessary. In Norton Internet Security 2009, they seem to have found the right balance.

Whitelisting, the buzzword of security products for 2009, is included within the new suite, and by marrying it with other technologies, Symantec makes it more suited for the user. Files on a whitelist are deemed trusted, and thus do not need to be scanned as often. Not all "safe files" make it onto the whitelist. For those, Norton uses a community process, called Insight, similar to that used by other security products such as Haute Secure. The thinking is that if thousands of other people are using this suspicious file, chances are it’s not a new piece of malware but a new application. On the other hand if only a few are using it, then maybe it’s worth it to take another look to see if it’s malware.

Norton enhances its home network monitor, giving you a system administrator’s perspective on the relative health and security of all the computers within your home.

And Norton Internet Security 2009 brings back the concept of the Recovery Disk once popular in the early 1990s, but declines to include a backup solution (you’ll have to buy another Symantec product for that).

Gone is the awful LiveUpdate component of past Norton products. With 2009 products, Symantec is providing antimalware definition signatures every few minutes or so. On the interface you’ll see a notice indicating how many minutes since the last update. We didn’t see definitions older than four minutes in our testing.

Missing still are the various security utilities provided in other products, namely McAfee Total Protection. We would like to see, for instance, a secure file eraser or the ability to trace potentially malicious IP addresses within Norton Internet Security 2009. Nor is there any mobile-specific security solution provided within Norton Internet Security 2009.

Performance

In CNET Labs’ performance tests, Norton Internet Security 2009, as a suite, scored better than some standalone antivirus applications on our test Windows XP systems. In third-party, independent antivirus testing using live viruses, Norton products have scored in the upper ranks, although not always in the top position. On the CNET iTunes test, Norton Internet Security 2009 scored close to the test system result at 272 seconds, 3 seconds faster than the standalone version of Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2009. On the CNET Microsoft Office test, Norton Internet Security 2009 finished at a respectable 1,443 seconds, placing near the middle. In a test scanning a single folder with compressed and media files, Norton Internet Security 2009 came in at 202 seconds, which was the upper end of middle. In terms of boot speed, once again Norton came in fast at 33 seconds.

To find out how we test antivirus (and now Internet Security suite) software, see CNET Labs’ How we test: Antivirus software page.

In terms of how well Norton Internet Security 2009 will protect your PC, we cite results for Norton Antivirus from two leading independent antivirus testing organizations. In the latest test results from AV-Comparatives.org, for on-demand scans Norton Antivirus 2008 earned an Advanced + (highest) rating, catching 97 percent of all malicious software tested. However, for the Retrospective/Proactive test, Norton Antivirus 2008 earned an Advanced rating,with Norton falling behind the others, proactively blocking only 18 percent of the "new samples" in the test. From CheckVir.com, Norton Antivirus 2008 received its Standard award.

In antispyware testing on CNET, Norton Antivirus 2008 scored in the upper half of our top 10.

Support

Symantec has dropped its over-inflated per-call pricing schemes of the past; all regular telephone technical support calls are finally free. That’s good. But the bad news is finding that free telephone number.

Symantec encourages all users to use some self diagnosis tools first; that’s understandable since common problems can be self-remedied. In our tests, however, after answering no to "Does this resolve your problem?" we still didn’t get a telephone number, but an online form. Only after supplying a first name, last name, e-mail address, and phone (information you previously gave when setting up your Norton Account; why the two can’t be linked is unclear) are you offered a support phone number, and a help ticket is created.

Another observation: One Click Solution, Symantec self-dianosis tool always defaults to Internet Explorer, even if you don’t have it set for your default browser.

Prominent on the technical support page and competing for prime eyeball space are Symantec premium technical support services: Spyware and Virus Removal (prices range up to $99), PC Checkup Service ($29.99), Green PC Service ($14.99), and PC TuneUp ($69.99). Each service requires a technician to remotely control your PC while you watch them solve your given problem. It’s true no large software company provides consumers with free technical support, however, given the gigantic size of Symantec , it would be nice if the consumer-based Norton technical support could be a loss-leader for the company. Short of offering a free version of its Norton Antivirus product, by providing truly free technical support, Symantec might engender more positive feelings from former Norton customers who paid for such support in the past.

The Norton in-program Help is better than in past years. Within the Help file, more terms are explained and less jargon is used this year, but it’s still not as thorough as other Help documents we’ve seen in competing products. And user options when changing configuration settings, long the bane of this reviewer, are once again not adequately presented to the end user: you still have to trust Symantec opinion on many things.

And the 38-page online manual, although indexed, is not very comprehensive, and leans heavily toward installation and the creation of the Recovery Disk.

Only by accessing the Symantec Web site do you see the free community forums. That’s a mistake. Despite the company response that the Norton community forum is still in beta, these open communities provide more technical support than the canned responses offered through Symantec One Click Solutions process.

Conclusion

Norton Internet Security 2009 hits all the right security notes and its award-winning protection technologies should start to win back even jaded anti-Symantec folks. We love its sleek build, performance speed, and array of quality security tools. Our only fault–and it is a serious one–is its legacy of over-pricing on its consumer technical support.

from here.

Norton 360

Norton AntiBot

pcAnywhere 12.1

Norton Ghost 14.0

Norton Ghost 12.0

Norton Confidential

Norton AntiVirus 2008

Norton 360 Version 2.0

Norton SystemWorks Basic

Norton SystemWorks Premier

Norton Smartphone Security

Norton SystemWorks Standard

Norton AntiVirus 11 for Mac

Norton Internet Security 2008

Symantec pcAnywhere 12.1 Host

Norton Confidential for Macintosh

Norton Internet Security 3.0 for Macintosh

Norton Personal Firewall 3.0 for Macintosh

tursun.blogdown.org

Symantec Endpoint Protection 11.0

by Matthew D. Sarrel.

Businesses face myriad Internet threats—rootkits to the left, bots to the right, spyware behind—yet, despite all opposition, they must charge onto an e-commerce and technology battlefield. Fortunately, the new Symantec Endpoint Protection 11.0 (EP 11), an anti-everything software client, strings virtual barbed wire around your business’s PCs. A host-based intrusion prevention system (HIPS) uses TruScan proactive threat scanning to prevent zero-day attacks and at the same time locks down the desktop so that only authorized apps can run. Device control regulates the copying of files to USB memory devices. Antivirus and antispyware features (along with anti-rootkit protection) guard against malware. A network IPS rounds out the product, along with a firewall that provides low-level protection from network threats. Typically, when testing a product as feature-rich as this, we find a few things that don’t work, so we’re happy to report that Symantec Endpoint Protection 11 actually does work. It blocked malware and controlled removable device privileges as configured and is a fine choice for businesses with perhaps 25 to 50 users.

Administrators can install the software in unmanaged fashion—directly on workstations, in other words—or using a managed approach, by putting the software on a server and then packaging and pushing it to workstations. When I installed it on Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition (remember to turn on IIS before installation), a wizard walked me through configuration, during which I set the admin password and created a database (which took 15 minutes or so to initialize). The installation wizard launched a deployment wizard, and using that I exported an install package that was only about 60MB. Although I installed this package manually on my test workstation, you can push it to clients using Active Directory. Once the client software was running, the workstation appeared in the management console.

The management interface gives you control down to an extreme level of granularity. That’s no mean feat, and, for the most part, the developers did a great job. Still, to let managers segment clients for management purposes, there are four levels of organization (group, location, domain, client), and getting used to that took some time. The approach provides an advantage, though: Different administrators can assign different policies based on departmental policy and then apply a modified version of that policy if the computer moves. For instance, a laptop in the office may have a more restrictive security policy than the same laptop on the road.

This flexibility is important in large enterprises, but for small businesses it’s overkill. You should try to segment as little as possible to simplify ongoing policy management. The soundest advice I can give regarding implementation of Symantec Endpoint Protection 11.0 is to roll it out using the default policies, watch the notifications that you get, and adjust policy as needed over time.

Testing Symantec Endpoint Protection 11.0

Configuring security policy on my management server and pushing it to the client workstation was easy enough. But although the management interface is clean and well organized, the many options make getting lost quite possible. I had no trouble configuring malware scans and HIPS and firewall policies, though—it’s really just a matter of finding the right check box most of the time.

In my efficacy tests, Symantec Endpoint Protection 11.0 blocked six of six attempted virus downloads via HTTP, even detecting my test virus within a ZIP file. It blocked six of eight attempted keylogger downloads, allowing me to install the two that got through but later detecting one through a routine scan and removing it. The product blocked all seven attempted Trojan horse downloads and eight of ten spyware downloads, but it did allow me to install the two that got through without removing them. For comparison, consider that the feckless F-Secure Client Security 7.1 fell victim to eight keyloggers, four rogues, and four adware applications. In one case the spyware was never detected; in the other case the antispyware didn’t detect the spyware, but the firewall did. I was unhappy, though, that the message the utility displayed was the rather vague "HTTP CommonName Traffic Detected." A chat with Symantec confirmed that this did indeed mean the spyware had been blocked, and you can edit firewall policy from the management console to append a statement like "This traffic has been blocked and your network administrator has been notified" to the message. It might be nice if Symantec did this little piece of work for you, though.

Device control worked very well. I was able to prevent the client computer from writing files to a USB memory key, and I also built and distributed a policy that prevented users from sending data to CD and DVD drives, Bluetooth devices, and printers. In addition, I was able to customize the message that users would see when their access was blocked—a helpful capability that lets them know the restriction is intentional and not a system error.

Symantec Endpoint Protection 11.0 gives an organization’s IT administrator comprehensive tools for detecting and repelling attacks. With a protection product that allows this much flexibility and control over policies, you’ll have to spend some time learning the ins and outs, but that’s far better than learning that your business has been compromised. The good news is that once you climb the learning curve, the product actually works, unlike competitor F-Secure Client Security 7.1, which was easy to implement yet stopped practically nothing from infecting our test machines. Priced at roughly two to three times what the competition costs, Symantec Endpoint Protection 11.0 isn’t cheap, but in some respects you get what you pay for—and in this case, you’re paying for peace of mind.

Other Symantec products

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