Computer security giant Symantec has launched the 2010 line-up of Norton products.

And, boast Symantec, Norton Internet Security 2010 and Norton AntiVirus 2010 are their best products yet. Rowan Trollope, senior vice president, Consumer Products and Marketing, Symantec, said:
“One in five people will become a victim of cyber crime.. “We know that hackers don’t destroy computers, they destroy lives. The powerful new reputation-based security in Norton 2010 gives people the power to deny digital dangers wherever they are found online.”

According to Symantec, the Norton 2010 products have maintained an eye on performance, in spite of adding significant new protection technology to the release. Independent third party test lab, PassMark Software, was commissioned to benchmark Symantec and top security software competitors’ performance impact on key metrics. Their main conclusions were:

• Fast install. Norton Internet Security 2010 installs in about a minute;
• Least working memory usage. Norton Internet Security 2010 uses just over 10MB;
• Fastest scan. Norton Internet Security 2010 scans in only 61 seconds on a hard disk drive and in only 31 seconds on an solid state drive.

But that’s not all. Symantec claim that the Norton Insight family of technologies in the new 2010 products uses extensive online intelligence systems to proactively protect the PC. This helps keep users informed of the security and performance impact of files and applications that they encounter in their everyday online experience.

Individual ‘intelligence’ components include:

• Norton Download Insight. This uses extensive online intelligence systems leveraging reputation to proactively protect a PC. Analyzes and reports on the safety of new files and applications before users install and operate;
• Norton System Insight. This provides features and easy-to-understand system information to help keep PCs performing at top speed. Automatic and on-demand application optimization rejuvenates application performance. Also provides a view of recent events on the computer, providing the information required to research and analyze PC issues. Performance graphs help pinpoint what’s causing a computer to slow down;
• Norton Threat Insight. This gives details on threats that have been detected on a PC – including useful information on where it came from (the URL) and when it was initially encountered;
• Norton Insight Network. This leverages a cloud-based approach unique to them, say Symantec. Based on the Quorum technology, it takes cloud-based security beyond traditional blacklists and whitelists. It uses a statistical analysis of file attributes based on billions of scans on millions of computers to identify the trust level of a file. This way Norton can identify files to be trustworthy, or untrustworthy, that would otherwise fall into the grey area of the unknown with only traditional security methods.

The Norton 2010 line-up also has a number of additional key technologies:

• SONAR 2. This is sophisticated second-generation behavioural security technology that detects entirely new threats based on their suspicious actions, without the need for traditional fingerprints. Leverages data from the reputation cloud, firewall, network communications, and file attributes such as location on the PC, to decide when to detect a program as a threat;
• New Antispam (Norton Internet Security only). This is a powerful enterprise-grade spam blocking engine helps keep a user clear of unwanted email and safe from email-based scams and infections. It is 20% more effective than the previous engine and requires no training;
• Norton Safe Web (Norton Internet Security only). This is a website rating service that annotates Google, Yahoo! and Live.com search results with site safety ratings to warn users about sites that may pose a danger to them. It also includes ecommerce safety ratings to help users make safer online shopping decisions;
• OnlineFamily.Norton (Norton Internet Security only). This is for Norton Internet Security 2010 and users can opt to try a subscription to OnlineFamily.Norton. This is a new Web-based service that keeps parents in the loop on their kids online lives and fosters communication about what’s appropriate and inappropriate behavior on the Internet.

Norton 2010 offers free technical support and continues to deliver free support to Norton 2010 customers across all available channels, via the web, email, chat or phone. All products support Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Guest Article by Neil Camp