Product review: Norton 360

BANGALORE, INDIA: Here's a complete desktop security product from Symantec, called Norton 360. It provides protection from malware, spyware and even phishing attacks. It also contains a firewall, backup recovery, and an additional tool for tuning the PC. Norton 360 has a clean and intuitive interface that shows the status for four main categories, namely PC Security, Transaction Security, Backup and Restore, and PC Tuneup.

|The PC Security module houses the antivirus and firewall functionalities. Norton 360 uses application-behavior-based malware detection through which it can detect new threats in real-time. It performs on-access scanning and even provides for email scanning to safeguard against malware contained with emails. The firewall has an option for Intrusion Prevention. The settings for scanning can be done through 'Task and Settings' option, but we didn't find an option for scanning particular folders, drives, etc.

The Transaction Security module shows the status of phishing protection from online fraudulent sites. Norton 360 uses heuristic technology to prevent fraud and phishing attacks. It not only blocks such sites but also automatically authenticates the banking and shopping sites that a user uses for online transactions. This feature is compatible with Internet Explorer only, where a Norton toolbar appears showing Fraud Monitoring status.

The Backup and Recovery module allows data backups to the local hard drive or removable media. Plus, it also provides online storage space of 2 GB provided by Norton that can be used to automatically backup sensitive files or folders. Norton 360 keeps backup files or folders in a standard format so that they can be viewed using Windows Explorer. If those backed up files get deleted from backup location, there is no option for immediate restore.

The last module is PC Tuneup, which performs optimization by deleting unnecessary files like Windows temporary, Internet cache and history from the system. It also performs hard disk defragmentation. Apart from that there is also support feature through which the user can initiate a chat session for getting help online.

We installed it on a Windows XP machine infected with various viruses and malware. Upon installation, Norton 360 ran a drive scan and detected almost all viruses. We were however, able to copy archived viruses from a CD to the system running Norton 360, and it didn't raise any alarms. It became active the moment we tried to extract them. The QuickHeal antivirus we reviewed recently had blocked archived viruses from being copied onto the HDD. For firewall testing, we ran Nessus and got just one open exposed port. We also did DOS and port scanning attacks, which it managed to block. As Norton 360 has Intrusion Prevention, we did ARPspoof attack for IP spoofing. Norton's statistics report showed that it prevented a few intrusions, but unlike QuickHeal Total Security 2007, it didn't have a detailed log of activities detected and prevented. Plus, anti-spam is an optional feature in this package, whereas QuickHeal had included it in the package.

Bottomline: It is a good buy for desktop users, but not for experts who demand more customized settings.