I genuinely buy into the idea that there are people out there who are going all out to make our lives miserable for profit, and for pride. I run a website having to deal with hundreds of spam comments each day that come with thousands of dubious links. And I wonder: Why are there people out there doing something so unproductive affecting millions of people every second of the day? The reality is, these people not only want to disrupt your life by destroying your data, but also want to steal your identity in order to make money. I have had the opportunity to attend a workshop held by the Norton team July this year. The threat is real. It is not a question of “are you protected”. Rather, how well are you protected against the ever evolving threats. Instead of telling you what Norton Internet Security 2010 is, here are the reasons why I choose the Norton product and want no less.
1. The Power of Community Insight to Tackle the Unknown-Unknown
Years in the making, Norton has established a community network to tackle not only the black and white, but also the gray area. As seen below, the fingerprints of more than 66 millions files (note: NOT the actual file) have been submitted to Norton by the community. We know what are the good ones, the bad ones, and what are the ones that trust is yet to be earned.
Think about this. With the ever growing list of viruses, spyware, trojan horses, worms, bots, and rootkits, it seems counter productive to scan every file in your computer all the time. So, the concept of a community insight is to share the knowledge amongst the Norton users and skip those trusted files in your next scan. Reputation of unknown files are built that way too.
2. Working Silently in the Background
One thing I really like about the new generation of Norton products is that they work behind-in-scene without much interaction and disruption to your work. The moment I step away from my computer, Norton will scan my computer in the background. The moment I grab my mouse, the scan will be paused and resumed the next time I make my cup of coffee. Every so often, there is a pulse live update to make sure that my computer is protected with the very latest update. For the tech experts out there, the memory footprint of Norton is only less than 10MB. To give you an idea of what it means, Microsoft Live Messenger utilizes 30MB of my computer’s memory.
3. Feel Safe Surfing the Web
When you Google something going through the search results, how do you know which ones are safe to click onto? With this Norton product, now you can. Just take a look at the picture below, the little green ticks mean OK to click onto (thank God!). For malicious sites, you will be warned. Do note that there are sites out there that may hijack the real ones, look like the real ones. That too can be detected by this Norton product.
You can also turn on the parental control function if you have kids at home (not me!). And this Norton product also offers to store the user IDs and passwords for you. I prefer to use my [physical] personal diary to keep track of all my user IDs and passwords. Just so that I may still remember them when I am not using my home computer. These functions may be relevant to some.
Other Thoughts
I am a simple dude. I just want an industrial standard tool to protect my home computers from online threats. You may also wish to know that I have tried out their online support recently. It was kind of cool. The Norton service consultant actually took control of my computer thousands of miles away from my home. All I needed to do was to stare at the computer screen and ‘monitor’ how the consultant resolved my problem. I am impressed by his or her professionalism (though I nearly fell asleep halfway).
Also comes with Internet Security 2010 are a few tools to monitor the network security as well as the application ‘trust’ ratings. As of now, they are of less use to me. But I would suppose these tools would come handy when I become paranoid and want to see if there are some strange applications running in the background, or a stranger is logging onto my network.
Many friends whom I talk to often ask me how much it costs to run Norton products at home. Below is from the official source. And of course, I take no commission. How nice if otherwise! Do drop me a comment or write to me if you have questions. I may be able to get you an official response.
The suggested retail price for Norton Internet Security 2010 is SGD89.00 for a three PC license and SGD59.00 for a single PC license and for Norton AntiVirus 2010 is SGD65.00 for a three PC license and SGD39.00 for a single PC license. The price includes one-year service subscription to use the product and receive Symantec’s protection updates.
