Implying all-around, full-circle protection, Symantec's Norton 360, formerly codenamed "Genesis," combines comprehensive PC protection, backup services, and PC optimization capabilities. The product is designed for households that use the Internet for activities ranging from online banking to e-mail and instant messaging while continually accumulating digital files such as photos, music files, videos and more. Symantec launched the public beta of Norton 360 in late November.
Norton 360 serves protection against viruses, worms, Trojan horses, spyware, adware, hackers, phishing scams, and crimeware; provides data protection through automated back-ups and an online storage service; and fine tunes your PC's performance. While many of the features have been available before in Symantec's other products, Norton 360 combines features that were traditionally sold separately and adds online data storage to the mix.
The product's support for up to three PCs recognizes that many households now have more than one PC. Licensed as a subscription service, Norton 360 provides users with signature and product updates for the term of the subscription. At press time, Symantec said that Norton 360 will be offered in one-year terms.
Security
Security features in Norton 360 are built on Symantec's powerful antivirus engine and capably remove viruses from POP3-compatible e-mail and instant messages and block Internet worms from infiltrating your network. As with any reputable antivirus program, an auto-protect feature continuously monitors files as they are opened or executed to prevent viruses or malicious code from infecting PCs. Norton 360 also offers spyware protection as well as advanced rootkit detection and removal.
Transaction security features are designed to thwart fraudulent or malicious activities as users shop, bank, or conduct billing online. Also, phishing protection relies on Web site authentication to identify fraudulent e-commerce sites that are trying to collect personal information. Norton Confidential offers similar Website authentication and protection from phishing schemes, but comes with additional features such as password security and password blocking that aren't currently available in Norton 360.
Backup: On-site or Online
With more personal data being stored on home PCs, from confidential financial files to irreplaceable family digital photos and video, good backup capabilities are a timely addition to the security package. In addition to backing up data to a CD, DVD, or external drive, as any backup program can do, Norton 360 also offers an option to back up files to a secure online service — the only Symantec product to offer this capability.
Norton 360 also presents a quick and straight-forward one-time setup that asks you to first identify the folders and files that you want backed up and then define how often to update them. Here, the intuitive interface makes it particularly easy to see and select key folders and files. After the initial setup, Norton 360 efficiently performs the backups behind the scenes.
An impressive feature, new content is automatically detected by Norton 360 and is incrementally stored during idle time or at designated, scheduled times. Symantec ensures the security of online backups by relying on 128-bit AES encryption; user authentication tokens and per-session keys are supported as well. Stored data is encrypted with 256-bit AES encryption.
At press time, Symantec said that Norton 360 would come with 2GB of free storage space. Unfortunately, this is a paltry amount that probably doesn't come close to meeting the backup needs of an average family, particularly when you consider the storage space necessary to house digital photos, music, and video.
As you might expect, the company is planning to offer additional backup storage space for a price. At press time, Symantec had no pricing estimates for this upcoming service.
Anti-Crash
Norton 360 also removes unwanted Internet clutter such as cookies, internet caches, and temporary files that can slow down a PC's performance. The app is also designed to reduce the risk of system crashes. Missing, however, are system recovery features such as those found in Norton Ghost and Norton Save and Restore for resurrecting a downed PC. On its Website, Symantec says that it may add such capabilities in future versions. In theory, these would be added without any additional charges as part of the yearly subscription.
