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Norton Internet Security 2005
Once again Symantec provides one of the
most thorough security packages that not only protects the user from
viruses, hackers and privacy threats but also eliminates spam and now
comes with a much needed Parental Control interface for parents.
Norton Internet Security 2005 is available
as either a paid download from
www.symantec.com or it can be purchased at any good computer store.
The installation of Norton Internet Security 2005 was a breeze and
simple auto-installed when the CD was detected by the computer. It
should also be noted that the installation of NIS2005 takes around 5
minutes and once the installation has been completed, it will prompt the
user to download the latest updates from the internet.
After the installation was completed, we
were greeted to the extremely familiar Symantec interface that is neatly
divided into four categories that includes Norton Internet Security,
Norton AntiVirus, Norton AntiSpam with the inclusion of Norton Parental
Control at the bottom of the interface. All these tabs allow the user to
specify the level of protection that suits their need and by default,
all the programs are set to a rather aggressive level that ensures the
best possible protection.
Unfortunately all this protection comes at
a price and even on our test machine (an Athlon 64, 1GB Ram and dual
SATA Hard Drives) running Windows XP, the system considerably slowed
down. Although I would recommend that the majority of users, especially
novice ones keep the default settings of NIS2005, gamers and PC
professionals should tweak the settings of the program in order to
ensure that their system remains running at the best possible speeds
with adequate protection.
The security aspect of NIS2005 targets a
variety of different internet threats that ranges from harmful Java
applets (such as viruses) to mischievous ActiveX programs (information
retrievals) which is all performed by a powerful firewall that is the
central core of this software package. The firewall offers a variety of
different levels with the minimal level of security, blocking only the
most common attacks, with the highest setting targeting just about all
unathorised communication attempts to your computer.
Although NIS2005 is quite similar to its
predecessors, it does offer a variety of new features to the suite that
include the Outbreak Alert which informs users of potential deadly
viruses that have just been discovered and also the Norton PopUp blocker
that helps in removing those annoying popups that some websites are
plagued with. As with all PopUp blockers, Norton PopUp blocker does
suffer from stopping legitimate popups but unfortunately in this day and
age, this has yet to mastered by any software company.
The Parental Control of NIS2005 allows the
user to prevent their children from accessing a variety of different and
unsuitable websites that I'm sure all parents will breathe a sigh of
relief with this feature. This Parental Control feature also accesses an
online database that contains thousands of online websites to assist in
the prevention of access to unauthorised sites. Although rather
simplistic, it does do a rather good job at preventing unauthorised
access to certain sites. Probably the most welcomed features of NIS2005
is the inclusion of Norton AntiSpam that targets junk e-mails by using a
smart filtering engine that also allows for user input, so you can be
rather safe in ensuring that you are only receiving e-mails from
authorised people.
The Norton AntiVirus aspect of NIS2005 is
similar to the previous version but this time, Norton AntiVirus also
targets spyware which is probably one of the most annoying aspects of
surfing the internet because it targets the user with specific
advertising and also sends back personal information to spyware
databases. The auto update feature of NIS2005 also ensures that the user
is protected from the latest known viruses and spyware and match that
with a state of the art firewall and Norton Internet Security 2005 is
easily one of the most comprehensive security software packages around.
As mentioned earlier in this review, Norton
Internet Security 2005 does come at a high price that even affect
high-end machines by slowing the system down because of the high level
of protection that this security suite offers. Fortunately, a lot of
this slowdown can be avoided by configuring the program and turning off
certain defaults. Norton Internet Security 2005 is an extremely thorough
security program that I would recommend to all high-end computer users
with state-of-the-art systems.
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