Norton Internet Security is a revelation, addressing the many problems of earlier bloatware norton releases. Having had many problems with Norton products in the past, mainly the hit on system resources, but also the less than comprehensive protection, having had some machines badly infected while supposedly full protected by norton products, NIS 2010 so far has exceeded my expectations, although it remains to be seen how good the protection will be in the long term.
NIS 2010 is a very well designed piece of software, its hard to find software which will be up and running as quickly, although best installed on a clean machine, removing existing anti-virus and firewall products. The install requires almost no input from the user, and indeed if your looking for an idiot-proof internet security suite this would seem to fit the bill, needing almost no intervention.
Upon installation a norton toolbar is added to your browser, no choice given, this allows access to the identity safe and safe surfing, verifying websites and allowing for overall password control, the site safety feature uses a traffic light system giving a green light to supposedly safe sites, but this seems somewhat subjective as there are a lot of less than safe sites getting green lights with this system. worryingly turning off the safe surfing component in the main console results in the message that this may result in identity safe auto-filling fraudulent websites with your confidential information, food for thought if turning off this not so useful feature.
The smart firewall installs and runs in the background making automatic decisions about what to allow and what to block, its worth checking the program control in the network settings to see which programs and processes have been allowed access, but more usefully full control of the firewall can be easily be achieved, simply turning automatic program control off in the advanced firewall settings, allowing the more advanced user full control of network access.
Norton Internet Security 2010 does an impressive job of delivering a lot of powerful features but the demands on the computer are remarkably light, to prove the point there is even a real time display of cpu usage and what percentage of that is norton. Indeed on vista it runs much faster than any other combination of anti-virus and firewall, impressively so.
The silent mode is a superb feature, and very flexible. When running in silent mode NIS 2010 will run in the background as efficiently as possible, it wont start scans or any other tasks and it wont display any notifications or pop-ups, this is run automatically while watching movies or games full screen, or can be turned on for a predetermined period of time, or configured to run whenever a certain program starts, and end to annoying background virus scans at inopportune moments when working or watching. Great feature.
Insight protection, which is supposed to be a big part in improving the speed of threat detection, allows for intelligent file recognition, but in terms of fine tuning tool it does not give the depth of information as some other similar tools, allowing for close inspection of suspicious files and processes. The insight settings are somewhat confusingly accessible as application ratings on the main console, rather than the more logical insight protection details.
The main console is fairly straightforward but the ignore and monitor options available for each setting are extremely obscure in terms of what they are actually doing, and seem best ignored.
Norton Internet Security is a very comprehensive all-in one product which delivers a great range of features at impressive speed, successfully addressing one of nortons big downfalls of previous versions, it remains to be seen how well it will actually protect a machine against potential threats.