Review: Norton 360 version 6

As far as security suits go, Symantec’s Norton 360 suite sits at the top the ladder. Historically, Norton has always had a very-very large user base thanks to a legion of OEM pre-installations, but often it was criticized for slowing down Windows hardware, yet in the last few years, the company reinvented its core underlying architecture, to make its security software lighter, nimbler and more powerful than ever. Norton 360 version 6.0 for the year 2012 is the culmination of the best Symantec consumer software in one package. It is perhaps the most comprehensive security suite on the market, but let us see if it is the best one.\

Security Features

Norton 360 for 2012 provides a multitude of security features and its protection starts from the installer itself. Norton calls it the self-healing installer, which will counteract any malware installed on the computer when the 360 suite is being installed on a Windows machine. We witnessed this when we started the installer package, and to our dismay the self-healing installer found malware on our personal computer, which admittedly was thought to be malware free. How wrong we were?
Luckily, in our case the malware was not a major trojan/virus but was a rather benign piece malware which got disable quite easily and after that the installer asked for a restart and we were ready to go.
The first thing we noticed was the start-up, as security suites are notoriously known to dramatically slow down computer start-up times, but in the case of the Norton 360, the difference was quite negligible. We could even argue, in-spite of the presence of Norton 360, the start-up time was faster than we had first purchased the computer which came preloaded with a McAfee security program.
With the latest version of Norton 360, Symantec touts an intelligent firewall. It does the needful, which includes stealth ports, making the PC invisible to outdoor threats, it controls permissions for Internet access for each and every program and it does a pretty good job of handling direct attacks. How do we know this? Well, if you happen to use torrent software often, then you may often get pinged by an unwelcome visitor. Often we noticed, the firewall pinged us, as a random IP address tried to access our computer and mind you, this was happening when we were on torrent sites, not while downloading content from torrent sites. Most of the sites hosting the torrent files are normally infested with the scum of the Internet and this normally plays out to be a pretty good test bed for testing security software. At least, for a layperson, we can guarantee, a similar use case.
Additionally, the firewall can tab into Norton’s vast Insight database that captures virus behavior from the millions of Norton users around the world. This means, that Norton 360 firewall is able to automatically configure setting for most popularly used programs, like you know Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, TweetDeck, Google Chrome and the works.
And if you happen to encounter an unknown entity or an companion piece of crapware that tags along a piece of software in the garb of a browser tool bar or whatever, the firewall will scrutinize the app thoroughly using the Insights database and if the app tries anything untoward, the 360 firewall will set up a roadblock.
However, for the most part the Norton 360 firewall is rather unobtrusive and generally it did not trouble us on a day-to-day basis.
The antivirus and firewall on Norton 360 work in tandem, and this combination results in a formidable protection field for a vulnerable Windows PC. If prevention is better than cure is your maxim, then you will definitely like Norton 360. It blocks most ads on the browser, even some of the more persistent ones. We did not only try this on BGR.in, but also on numerous other sites. And when we tried logging into websites that generally host malware or fake antivirus software, Norton 360 took care of the nuisance almost immediately, with minimal user engagement.
Even Anti-Virus test masters, AV-Test.Org have rated Norton Internet Security 2012 among the top security suits with them giving it maximum points for protection. Furthermore, they have rated it highly for repair and usability as well. And since, the protection bit of Norton 360 is essentially the same as Norton Internet Security 2012, we feel pretty safe with Norton 360 manning our PC’s gateway to the Internet.
The last widget of the security functionality includes spam filtering. Historically, Norton 360 has had a hit or miss record with spam filtering, but this time around it works pretty effectively. We tend to get bombarded by spam, especially on our person email IDs. We’ve seen it all; from elicit porn and dating spam, to fake malware. Generally, Gmail’s spam filter does an okayish job of protecting us, nevertheless, we still find our inboxes infested with spam mail. To mitigate this for an interim period, we installed the spam filter on Microsoft Outlook 2010 and the results were quite encouraging. There was quite a noticeable decrease in spam mail and luckily the filter was not overly aggressive and it did not engage in throwing away regular or official mail in the spam box, though it did throw the odd press release in the bin, but that was a rather a negligible folly.
Another rather less glamorous aspect of Norton 360 is the personal identity manager. It is basically a super secure auto form filler and password manger. Once set up, we did not need to incessantly enter personal and credit card information while making online transactions from websites like Sweetwater.com and Amazon.com. But this has been there in Norton 360 for sometime and Norton has further upgraded this feature by adding the ability to store the identity safe data online and share it between multiple computers running Norton 360 and Internet Security 2012. The protection is dual pronged as first, the user needs to login his/her Norton account and then needs an Identity Safe login. On the whole, this feature is quite reminiscent to RoboForm.
Norton 360 even offers a parental security element known as Norton Online Family. Parents can create online accounts, however since the interface is completely web based and no element is part of the software stack per say, all the settings are connected to the Norton Account. This is a handy tool for preventing ones kid from logging in to an adult site. The one offered with Norton 360 is a free version, though Symantec even offers a more comprehensive tool, as a paid option.

Backup and Utilities

Norton 360 provides basic backup facilities with 2GB of online storage. The data can be backed up from numerous sources even including network drives. One can easily restore files and access files from anywhere via ones Norton Account and the storage can be bumped up to 25GB for additional $99.99. Though this in today’s day and age of Dropbox, Google Drive and Skydrive is a bit pointless.
Additionally, another element that adds to the value of a Norton 360 suite is the number of utilities the suite offers for PC tune-ups. The tool includes a file cleaner, Registry cleaner, disk defragmenter, start-up manager, resource manager and a diagnostic tool. The tools work as advertised, but most of this functionality can be had for free via number of free solutions that are available in plenty for Windows.

Verdict

The Norton 360 for 2012 is available in India for Rs 1,150 and at this price it proves to provide a comprehensive, robust and reliable security solution for the common PC user. Its security chops in particular are worth their weight in gold. However, its back-up and tune utilities on paper may add another dimension to the suite, but in real world usage they add little or no value what so ever as cheaper and free alternatives are readily available, however though they will not offer the integrated experience of Norton 360.
In terms of the competition, though, Norton 360 seems like a clear-cut winner, as suites from McAfee and Trend Micro don’t hold a candle in front of the usability and integration offered by Norton 360.