Norton Internet Security 2011 – A complete review

Posted 505 days ago No Comments by Jason S

I have reviewed the NIS 2010 (Norton Internet Security) and also Norton 360 in the past and have had lots of response from you folks that they were indeed so much more better and also so much more faster. This time round I have the NIS 2011 up for review here. Before I start I must admit that I received the copy of NIS 2011 almost 3 weeks back and just got busy with other stuff and travel that I couldn’t really write this review – but on the positive front, I had loaded NIS 2011 into my laptop and have used it already for 2+ weeks – now that’ll give a very good review.

Let’s dive into the review – as always Norton Internet Security as far as I see it, is the best in just two things – total protection from cyber threats and make your PC run faster – now isn’t that all we need and expect from a good anti-virus solution? Interestingly YES!! NIS 2011 is simply the fastest, light-weight and best security solution that you can buy.

One problem with combating scareware is that individual pieces are typically so new that antivirus signatures have yet to be devised to identify them.

Since Viruses and Malware are now easily detectible by the Security Solution, we see more and more virus writer’s opting for newer ways of attack like using spoofed Facebook links and so-called scareware. Scareware are nothing but malware that masquerades like a virus-scanning software – you must have already seen this in many websites, saying take a free online scan, etc. NIS 2011 does a simply wonderful job in eliminating both of these new threats.

There is a very cool new feature called as Facebook Scan which checks all the links on your Facebook Wall and more importantly your News Feed to find any link to malware or to sites known to contain malware content. When you click to start it, the Facebook Scan takes you to a browser page, where it reports on the progress and results of the scan.

But the bad thing is that, to use this Facebook app(that’s how Norton has designed it), you’ll have to provide Norton Internet Security 2011 access to your Facebook stream and not just that – it also asks for permission to post the results to your Facebook page – which isn’t really very nice. But anyways, just using the scanner feature doesn’t require posting permission in order to work – but I for once didn’t find it very comfortable.

The biggest problem that all secuirty suites face today with scareware is that the scareware writers are so experienced that they write small individual pieces of code which are typically so very new that the existing antivirus signatures simply can’t identify them. Norton Internet Security 2011 wants to nip this problem at the bud and here’s how. In NIS 2010 we had a feature called ”Download Insight” which used to check files as they are downloaded, as well as files already on your system, to validate it with the Symantec servers whether they are “trusted”. Now this same feature is extended by adding support for more browsers. Since NIS 2010 supported only Internet Explorer and Firefox – the use was a bit limited for users of other browser’s. NIS 2011 includes support for the now famous Chrome, Opera, AOL and Safari including Internet Explorer and Firefox too. It just doesn’t stop at that but also extends support for many instant messaging, peer-to-peer and email applications, which includes AIM, Microsoft Outlook, Yahoo! Messenger and Windows Live Messenger. Now that’s really going to be very helpful and also very cool.

NIS also provides you with your daily browsing protection by the feature of Norton Safe Web. Norton Safe Web will automatically highlight you of any phishing scams and malware-ridden pages when you search using Google or Yahoo! or even Bing. This is cool – in a sense you can scan a site right at the search results page. Norton Internet Security 2011 also constantly monitors the links you click from within emails, PDF files, Word documents, Excel Files and more – to prevent you from being tricked into visiting known dangerous sites.

Some of the Key Benefits of using NIS 2011:

Stop online dangers without sacrificing performance with the industry’s fastest, lightest PC security suite.
Browse, shop, and bank online with protection against cybercriminals who can steal your identity or hardearned money
Email, chat, and surf the web without worrying about cybercriminals ripping you off.
Fix even severely infected PCs with Norton Rescue Tools
Keep your kids safe when they go online with parental control management

All I can say after using Norton Internet Security 2011 is that it is simply a very versatile security suite for every kind of user / PC that connects to the internet. NIS 2011 includes everything you need to keep your PC safe from malware, online scams and identity thieves.