Norton 360 v5 is the iteration of Symantecs All-in-one System Suite. It is just like Norton Internet Security Suite; Norton 360 provides protection from viruses, spyware, fraudulent websites, phishing scams, intrusions, and the latest online threats. It extends help to keep PCs tuned for optimum performance, provides automatic local and online backups included in the yearly price.
Review
Norton claims that this version brings improved performance and protection which is certainly true here provided by the tests done by test labs. Norton has received the VB 100% award from Virus Bulletin. ICSA labs and West Coast labs certify Norton technology for virus detection and removal. Dennis Technology Labs rated this as the best performing product. AV-Test tested Norton Internet Security 2011 edition which is the same security engine used in Norton 360 v5. It achieved high score 5.0/6.0 in Protection, Usability and 5.5/6.0 in Repair of security threats. The vulnerability protection is good and the vulnerable programs are keeping up to date, can lead to malware attack. They are web based applications such as JAVA, Adobe flash, Silverlight etc. The Norton Insight protects you from downloading dangers by checking every file with databases of them and community users.
The new feature in this version is capability to check Facebook Wall and News Feed for bad links and other threats from your control center. The Facebook integration isnt intuitive; too much user interaction is required to make the user aware. The safe web scanner leads you to check the site is safe or not. Norton has improved its Parental Controls, you can now sign up for Norton account and get insight into what your child are doing online from anywhere remotely. The account gives web access to what youre searching or accessing if they cleared the browser history too.
Symantec provides a world map of top cities in which threats found in the main suite, it touts a unique Norton Crime Index. It opens up a browser window showing percentage of Cybercrime going up or down. Live news updates and harmful reminders adorn the Cybrecrime index. The price of the product is same as Kaspersky Pure 2011 and the price tag for Norton 360 V5 is $79.99 on a 1 year subscription for 3 PCs.
Observation
The Norton acquired Verisign last year and has integrated technologies in one efficient package, it is totally non-admin friendly. The issues like changing the setting with Standard User account has been still there. The Nortons Firewall checks everything that comes in and out of the system, doesnt allow a way to intelligently search for programs through its own firewall. You have to go through each and every entry to block a program. If Norton finds a file as a false positive, there is no way to ignore intuitively, if the file is caught as virus means it will be deleted, if you want it back means you have to disable the anti-virus, restore the file through the Security history and hit on the settings to add to exclusion list. It only register threats in the history, if the Firewall is asked to Block all traffic, there is no icon indicating so, everything looks fine when viewed from the system tray or even the main window.
Conclusion
We will definitely recommend this Norton 360 v5 for you. The reason is the best security suite you can buy which goes beyond Internet Security. The Norton 360 v5 makes more sense, the truly automated system protection, and optimization. It got two different packages standard on with 2GB online backup while the Premier edition comes with 25GB space of back up and costs almost double. Whatever it is, the security suites we are using must secure your devices, the Norton 360 v5 does that well.
