the insidedesign blog

In today’s business and home environments, your computer is always connected to the internet – and for many, on almost 24 hours a day. In other words, your computer – and the data housed within – is always at stake. To reduce your risk of incident, it is important that you implement software that helps protect you – such as a security suite.

That is why every year, we investigate all available security suite options and choose one we believe to be superior. This year, we recommend our readers and Support clients to use Norton Internet Security 2009.

During our review of internet security suites, we looked at several areas:

• Certifications: independent organizations that set performance criteria for and certify security software.
• Performance: what is the software’s impact on system resources, how quickly does it perform scans, etc.
• Features: SPAM protection, IM protection, website filters, etc.
• Ease of Use: how easy is it to install and use, does it excessively prompt for user input, etc.
• Others: update frequency, program size, support features, etc.

In each case, Symantec’s Norton Internet Security 2009 exceeded our expectations.

Certifications

Norton Internet Security 2009’s anti-virus and anti-spyware have ICSA certifications. In addition, the anti-virus portion is VB 100% certified, and caries WCL Level 1 and 2 certifications. On the product’s website, Symantec claims that Norton had identified over 1.1 million threats by the end of 2007 – and these certifications give credence to such a claim.

Performance

This is where we were blown away. Norton has completely reworked their 2009 Internet Security suite with performance front and center – and it shows:

• Installation takes less than 1 minute, and does not require a reboot.
• 20% faster boot time, or more than 8 seconds faster than average.
• 79% faster scan time.
• 86% less memory, with an average system memory usage of 6 to 11 megabytes.
• 57% faster downloads, with web pages downloading almost  twice as fast.
• Initial software installation takes less than one minute.

These are some serious improvements, especially for a brand that has a history of exactly the opposite on performance. Additional metrics are available from the PassMark benchmarking report (from which the above numbers were generated).

Features

The features you expect from a full security suite are there, including:

• Norton Insight technology that targets only at risk files for faster, fewer and shorter scans.
• Norton Sonar protects your system from un-known threats by analyzing program behavior and monitoring network traffic.
• Norton Protection System provides a multi-layered approach to security.
• Other important features include SPAM protections (SPAM toolbar for your email client), recovery tools, identity and transaction protections, home network protections, and more.

Norton Internet Security 2009 offers a full plate of features and offerings; you can read more about them here.

Ease of Use

From the very onset, Norton Internet Security 09 is extremely user friendly. Installation takes less than one minute to complete, and only requires one mouse click to get started. With security updates automatic, and scanning times preset to begin when your system is idle, many people will find that this security suite is ready out of the box.

However, if you want to dive in and adjust some of the settings to work more in-tune with how you use your computer – this is no problem. Norton Internet Security 2009 features a sleek and easy to understand interface that allows you to change settings with ease.

More importantly, Norton will not bombard you with questions about what programs should be allowed to run or to have access to the internet. With “application intelligence”, Norton will make these decisions for you.

Other Areas

With so many internet security suites on the market, we look for additional features to help make our recommendation. Besides having a proven track record of identifying viruses, SPAM, and malware, security software should excel in other areas to make one complete package.

With Norton Internet Security Suite 2009, we really like these additional features:

• Pulse Updates ensure you are up-to-date on the latest virus definitions every 5 to 15 minutes.
• Smart scheduler that scans your system when your computer is idle or not in use.
• Automatic Silent mode ensures that you will not be bothered by Norton non-critical alerts.
• Auto-Fix capability that helps diagnose and fix most common problems.
• and if that does solve your problem, Free phone support is available.
• Easy uninstall, removes everything but your license information.
• Norton Community Watch gives you the option of joining Norton’s online watch community, allowing you to share security data anonymously with Norton in order to help identify global patterns in information threats.
• and finally, the performance improvements with Norton over other security suites on the market is phenomenal. No longer do you need to sacrifice computer performance for security!

Our Recommendation

For 2009, we recommend Norton’s Internet Security 2009 for your computer system. We feel that this security software will work great for your home office and small business network. You can pick-up the software for $59.99 from Norton’s Internet Security 2009 product page, which includes 1 year of protection for three separate computers.

If you require professional assistance with your computer system or network, please feel free to contact Insidedesign Support at 888-812-4727.

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