Product Reviews

Another year, another version of Norton Internet Security from Symantec. But does 2005 bring anything truly new to the security party or just an update for the sake of it? The answer is a bit of both, although the balance tips just enough in favour of the new to keep us happy. Combining AntiVirus 2005, AntiSpam 2005 and Personal Firewall 2005 with a slick central management console, Norton has stepped forward with some interesting new features.

One vital factor has been Symantec's acquisition of Brightmail, a company known throughout the enterprise sector for its anti-spam and more recently anti-fraud protection services. Some of its technologies will undoubtedly filter down to the Norton consumer-level products, and this release includes email fraud-detection filters, which check incoming email message bodies for fraudulent URL addresses, immediately classifying these as spam. Couple that with the new information-blocking tool in the firewall, which alerts the user to personal data being sent to non-trusted sites, and we start to see the phishing threat effectively tackled from the client side.

There's also a language filter built into AntiSpam, allowing you to specify which languages you expect to receive email in, and treats everything else as spam. It's an elegant way of reducing specific types of problem mail, although you'll need to change it from the default of allowing all languages to be effective. More immediately useful is the handy new feature that will automatically synchronise AntiSpam's allow list with your POP3 address books. AntiSpam doesn't have quite the real-world intelligence of our current client-side filtering favourite, Audiotrieve's InBoxer, but it's certainly effective enough to justify its presence.

The proliferation of worms is addressed with the Internet Worm Protection feature, which obstructs unsolicited and suspicious inbound traffic occurring on multiple online ports. It doesn't have the configurability of McAfee's VirusScan 8 Professional 2004, but its inclusion is welcome nonetheless. Blended threats like Sasser and Blaster should be neutralised by such defences, where traditional anti-virus applications

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have often been slow to respond.

Symantec makes much of the Outbreak Alert feature, which shows the number of critical-level active viruses. It's of limited actual use other than for adrenaline, although anything that draws users' attention to threats that aren't currently covered is a good thing. Even better is keeping everything up to date using the excellent LiveUpdate function. Now the earlier problems with LiveUpdate seem to have been well and truly sorted, it's this single point of control for updates across all components that's Norton Internet Security's biggest selling point. There's a lot less opportunity to miss a core update with this central administration strategy than if the task is spread across numerous individual applications. Set up for automatic updates, LiveUpdate quietly and efficiently keeps all your important signature files and programs up to date. When put head-to-head against the ZoneAlarm Security Suite updater, we found Norton to be quicker and have less effect upon the rest of the system while it worked its magic.

Spyware detection, ad blocking, popup blocking, comprehensive parental content controls, and tight integration of the anti-spam function with Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora and, now, Yahoo! Mail all adds up to an impressively holistic approach to system security. We particularly like the option to lower the firewall for a specified amount of time, ensuring that it comes back online automatically after network administration or software installation.

There's no doubting the power and completeness of this integrated security solution, although some will inevitably be disappointed with what's essentially an upgrade rather than a complete overhaul. However, the crunch for Symantec is whether it can attract back those users who have jumped ship to either ZoneAlarm or McAfee, or simply haven't been tempted by the Norton approach. So has it done enough to tempt these all-important floating voters?

Well, we have reservations in some areas; in particular the impact upon system resources, which, while significantly better than Norton products of old, is still heavier than ZoneAlarm. But when you put the whole package together, it's hard to beat as an integrated suite, especially given the price when compared to the cost of separate firewall, anti-virus and anti-spam clients. Buying the three core components separately would cost £105, but it's not just £55 you're saving - it's system resources, management complexity and ultimately the integrity of your data as well. This, along with the consummate ease of use of the central management console, is enough to once again raise Symantec to the top of the all-in-one security suite tree and regain a spot on the A List.