Overview

Norton Internet Security delivers fast and light online threat protection. It guards your PC, network, online activities, and your identity with innovative detection technologies optimized to combat today’s aggressive, rapid-fire attacks. It makes online shopping, banking, and browsing safer and convenient. The improved Norton Protection System features multilayered security technologies. They work together to provide comprehensive protection that detects and removes threats before they can harm your computer. It stops online identity theft, viruses, hackers, bots, spyware, Trojan horses, and more without slowing you down or getting in your way.

Installation

Installation is fairly straight forward following the install wizard. During the process you will be prompted to create a Norton account or sign into your current one.

Unlike Norton Antivirus, the license with Internet Security allows you to protect up to three computers for a year.

Features

The user interface is set up the same as Norton Antivirus but with several extra features for controlling the network and web protection systems.

Norton Insight is able to increase performance by not scanning trusted files added to a whitelist.

Norton Insight Network provides additional protection by identifying new threats from the Norton Community.

File Insight is a feature that tells you where files and apps come from and if they are trusted.

Easy to configure Network Settings where you can control Email protections, Smart Firewall, Instant Messenger and more.

The Norton Internet Toolbar will install on Internet Explorer and Firefox and allows you to access several functions including…Report Site, Minimize, Toolbar. My Norton Account, Manage Logins, Manage Cards, Manage Notes, Web Settings, Community Buzz, Go to Norton Safe Web website, Enable Norton Safe Web, Enable Safe Search, Launch Tutorial, and Help.

You can check out the safety of a website while at it and generate a full report.

When you do a search there will be red or green icon allowing you to identify if a site is safe or not.

Each section has its own settings and they are easy to enable or disable and configure.

Configurable Smart Firewall is included to protect you from potential online threats.

A complete set of Parental Controls through OnlineFamily.Norton

You can access different options quickly from the icon in the system tray.

Additional Features:

• Filters unwanted email with Anti-spam protection
• Secures computer when connecting to public wireless networks
• Blocks phishing websites
• Pulse updates every 5-15 minutes for up-to-the minute protection

Ease of Use

The 2010 version of Norton Internet Security has improved in several ways and one of them is its ease of use. Everything is laid out very logically making it intuitive to navigate and run.

You can run quick, Full, and Custom Scans.

While the scan is running you can monitor the progress and details. If a threat is found, you can choose the default actions or change them to another. When the scan has completed you can get detail results and export the data into a report.

You can turn off individual components of Internet Security or the entire utility off for a period of time if you need to.

Right-click a file to scan it using Norton from the Context Menu.

Performance

We ran our tests on a Windows 7 system with a dual core processor and 4GB of RAM and Quick scans were relatively fast and took up reasonable resources. The full scan is a bit more intensive and you will notice lag while multi-tasking and running a scan at the same time. Of course you should schedule scans for when you’re away from the computer.

The real-time protection doesn’t interfere with your daily computing however, and you can monitor the amount of system resources being taken up from the main interface.

With the web protection you won’t notice any performance hit on your speed. If you need to make any adjustments to the Smart Firewall it is simple through Advanced Settings.

Product Support

The product support page provides support through several means like FAQ, Knowledgebase, Downloadable Manuals, and through the Norton Community. They also have online chat and email support as well to get your questions answered from a support tech quickly.

They also offer product tutorials on their site for Antivirus and Internet Security to help you navigate through the new features.

Conclusion

Norton Internet Security 2010 could be considered the best version yet with an easy to control interface, enhanced level of detail, and speed in performance. It provides great default protection out of the box which makes it simple to use for basic computer users. There are a lot of configurable settings and features inside to allow power users to tweak it exactly how they like. This provides a complete set of security features to protect your machine, your identity, your kids, your network, and more from malware and other online threats. They offer a free 30 day trial and is $69.99 after that for a license which you can use to protect up to three computers.

Works on Windows XP SP2 (32-bit), Vista (32 & 64-bit), and Windows 7 (32 & 64 bit)

Rating

• Installation: 8
• Ease of Use: 8
• Features: 8
• Performance: 8
• Product Support: 8