Norton Internet Security 2014 review: Polished security suite with excellent protection

Norton Internet Security 2014 ($80 for one year of protection on up to three PCs) looks great—and it offers excellent protection against all threats. Internet Security 2014 also provides mobile security, comprehensive parental controls, and system insights, so advanced users can track their PCs’ performance. But Symantec’s suite isn’t perfect: Its menus, settings, and features are geared a little more toward advanced users than toward security newbies.

In our protection tests, Norton Internet Security 2014 was excellent, on a par with Eset Smart Security 7, F-Secure Internet Security 2014, Kaspersky Internet Security 2014, and Trend Micro Titanium Maximum Security 2014. Norton successfully defended our test systems against all zero-day malware attacks and all zoo malware assaults. Norton’s algorithms didn’t block or erroneously warn against any safe websites, nor did it flag any legitimate software as dangerous.

In AV-Test’s performance test, Norton received a mark of 8, tied with Eset Smart Security 7 for the highest mark among the ten suites in in our roundup, and an indication that you can expect to see a significant performance hit—slower startup and shutdown times and lag when opening and installing programs—when the software is running.

Norton Internet Security 2014's interface is easy to navigate.

Installing Norton is a breeze, unless you have other security suites on your system (including trial versions). You must uninstall other antivirus programs before you can proceed with your Norton installation. Fortunately, Norton lets you uninstall incompatible programs from within its installer. The uninstalling process may require a restart, but a straight Norton installation does not.

Norton’s interface blends perfectly with Windows 8, with large buttons and toggles instead of tiny checkboxes. The main screen presents you with four large squares, for status (colored bright green if you’re protected, and red if you’re not), scanning, updating the malware library, and access to advanced settings such as network protection and parental controls. Along the top of the window are text links to other settings and services.

The settings menu is clearly designed for relatively advanced users. When you click the little question-mark boxes next to certain items, you jump to explanations on Symantec’s main support site, but Inline explanations—like those used in Kaspersky’s security suite—would have provided a more seamless experience.

Norton Internet Security offers excellent protection, albeit at some cost to PC performance. Its polished, touchscreen-friendly interface is a plus, but it isn’t especially accessible to novices.

Sarah is a freelance writer and editor based in Silicon Valley. She has a love/hate relationship with social media and a bad habit of describing technology as "sexy."
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Review: Norton Internet Security 2013: Solid performer with a polished interface

Sarah is a freelance writer and editor based in Silicon Valley. She has a love/hate relationship with social media and a bad habit of describing technology as "sexy."
More by Sarah Jacobsson Purewal

Symantec’s 2013 edition of Norton Internet Security ($50 for one year and three PCs, as of 12/19/12) is a solid performer with a polished, touch-optimized user interface. This security suite didn’t totally dominate its competitors, but it did completely block, detect, and disable all malware in our real-world tests, and it performed well enough overall to snag second place in our roundup.

Norton’s excellent showing in our real-world attack test indicates that it should be effective at blocking brand-new malware attacks as it encounters them in the wild. As noted in the F-Secure review, of the security suites we tested, four others were also successful at completely blocking 100 percent of attacks: Bitdefender, F-Secure, G Data, and Trend Micro.

Norton produced stellar—though not absolutely perfect—results in detecting known malware. In our malware-zoo detection test, the program successfully detected 99.8 percent of known malware samples. Norton Internet Security also put up a perfect score in our false-positive test: It didn’t mistakenly identify any safe files, out of more than 250,000, as being malicious.

Norton does an acceptable job of cleaning up a system that has already been infected, but it missed some infections completely in our evaluation. In our system cleanup test, the program detected and disabled 90 percent of infections, and completely cleaned up 60 percent of infections. This is a decent but not fantastic showing—seven of our tested suites detected and disabled 100 percent of infections, and six cleaned up all traces of infection at least 70 percent of the time.

On the other hand, Norton Internet Security is a relatively lightweight program that won’t bog down your system. It added about half a second to startup time (compared to a PC that had no antivirus program installed), and also added 3 seconds to shutdown time; in all of our other speed tests, it was faster than average. Norton is faster than average when it comes to scanning speeds, as well. The package required just 1 minute, 19 seconds to complete an on-demand (manual) scan, and 2 minutes, 55 seconds to complete an on-access scan—both are times that represent better-than-average results.

Norton’s interface is very polished and simple, and the program installs with just one click. The main window has tilelike buttons, which look designed to work well with Windows 8 touch systems. You’ll find four tiles on the main screen: a tile that shows your protection status, along with information about your CPU usage; a ‘Scan Now’ tile; a LiveUpdate tile (which you’d use to install any updates to the suite); and a tile for advanced settings. You can also access the settings via the Settings tab, which is located at the top of the screen.

The settings menu is relatively easy to navigate, though it has more options than a beginning user really needs. Still, Norton does a good job of explaining different features and toggles, and a little help button (which takes you to Norton’s online support site) is always located next to confusing terms.

The 2013 version of Norton Internet Security is definitely worth a look, especially if you’re a Windows 8 user.

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Store Your Logins in Norton Identity Safe

Users of Symantec's Norton line of security products have long had access to its password management tools. But you no longer need to be a paying Norton user to get access to Norton Identity Safe, a standalone product that makes password management a (relatively) easy task.

Norton Identity Safe automatically captures your logins as your surf the Web.Once you install Norton Identity Safe, you'll need to set up an online Norton account, or link Identity Safe to your existing account. You'll also need to set a master password for access to your Vault, which stores all of your login information. That's it: setup is simple. And then you're good to go: You simply surf the Web as you normally would. Norton's Identity Safe installs as a toolbar on your browser, and it works in the background, capturing your passwords as you go. Anytime you enter a password, Identity Safe saves your login details to your Norton Vault, notifying you of the activity via a small bar that appears on the top of your browser screen. The next time you visit that site, Identity Safe automatically logs you in. Rival product LastPass offers users slightly more control for users, as it asks you each time it saves a password. But if you want your password manager to save absolutely everything, Norton's approach will save time.

Identity Safe also captures personal details that you can use to fill in forms, and saves these profiles as Identity Cards, so you can speed up the process next time you need to enter the info. To manage your logins and Identity Cards, you click the Vault icon that Norton installs on your browser. This lets you bring up Identity Safe's organization tools, which are neatly arranged, making it easy to handle tasks like creating sub-categories of logins.

Identity Safe also evaluates the strength of your passwords and offers tips on creating stronger passwords, but its built-in password generator is a bit clunky. You have to visit Identity Safe's Web site to generate a password, which you then copy and paste back to the site where you'd like to use it. LastPass, meanwhile, generates a password for you seamlessly, without making you leave the original Web page. It's a much more elegant solution.

Still, Norton Identity Safe is a handy password manager with a slick interface. It's available as a free download until October 17, 2012 (Norton has not said what, if anything, it will charge for it after then).

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.

—Liane Cassavoy

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Norton Internet Security 2012 Review: Solid and Efficient PC Security

An all-around solid defender and efficient performer, Symantec's Norton Internet Security 2012 ($70 for one year and three PCs as of January 25, 2012) comes in second in our 2012 security suites roundup on the strength of its slick, user-friendly interface and its solid malware detection and removal capabilities.

The Norton suite fully blocked all attacks in our real-world tests, which indicate how well security software will protect you against brand-new threats. It also detected 99.94 percent of known malware samples, the fourth-best result among the 14 products we looked at (the top package, G Data InternetSecurity 2012, achieved a detection rate of greater than 99.99 percent). In addition, the Norton software detected and deactivated all active malware components in our cleanup tests, and removed all remnants of malware half the time (which is about average). The Norton suite flagged nine known safe files out of 250,000 as being potentially dangerous; that’s quite a low false-positive rate percentage-wise, but it’s higher than average for the suites we tested.

In recent years Norton has claimed that its products won't slow down PCs, and for the most part that holds true in 2012. This year's edition added about 3.7 seconds to startup time compared to our test PC with no antivirus software installed, and added about 3.5 seconds to shutdown time. In both cases the Norton package performed somewhat better than average for the suites we tested. We saw the same kind of results in other performance tests, too, as the Norton suite had a lower-than-average impact on overall PC performance across the board.

The Norton package completed our scan tests quickly: It finished an on-demand scan (that is, one that occurs when you click the Scan button manually) of 4.5GB of data in 1 minute, 8 seconds--the second-fastest result in the test group. The on-access scanner (which fires up when you open or save files) completed scanning 4.5GB of files in 2 minutes, 34 seconds; again, that was the second-fastest time among the products we looked at.

We like Norton’s interface, too: It’s clean and well designed, and it installs with a click. Although it isn't the dead-simplest interface we've seen, the main panel is straightforward with a clear status indicator and links to common features. That said, while Norton's settings panel gives advanced users plenty of options to toggle, it may be a bit much for beginners. Still, in the end, Norton should be friendly enough for most people.

Even though G Data's suite edged out the Norton one overall in our roundup this year, Norton Internet Security 2012 is a very good option, and is easily worth your consideration.

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