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Symantec Norton Internet Security 2005 review

Evan Gower October 7, 2009

£47

Price when reviewed

Combining AntiVirus 2005, AntiSpam 2005 and Personal Firewall 2005 with a slick central management console, Symantec sticks to the formula that has served it so well over the years. Sure, the forced upgrades aren’t overly popular, especially when the product’s function doesn’t change much, but at least you know you’re getting a reliable performer. More so as Symantec has continued on its acquisition trail, buying up the best-of-breed vendors in an attempt to bring every element of security and system maintenance under a central umbrella of control.

Symantec Norton Internet Security 2005 review

It’s a grand idea and is an obvious move against the layered approach so many follow, but it does require the right products coupled with the right console. But with Internet Security Suite, Symantec has got it about spot on. Buying Brightmail, for example, was a great move, and already some of its technologies are finding their way out of the enterprise and into the consumer food chain: for example, email fraud-detection filters that check incoming email for fraudulent URL addresses within email message bodies and classifying these as spam.

Throw this in with the firewall’s confidential-information blocking tool and the phishing threat is addressed from the client side. Well, almost. You have to be very mindful of not only what data you’re entering into this personal vault, but also how you format it. This is especially relevant when dealing with credit card and bank account numbers, because easy-to-make mistakes leave you more vulnerable than before if you think you’re protected when you’re not.

In particular, entering the last six digits of a credit card as recommended, as a continuous string, won’t stop that information leaking out if you enter it in four-digit groups, as is the norm with credit cards. For example, if your number is of the form 1234 1234 1234 1234, then the software won’t block any outward email with the number string 34 1234 – so you have to ensure the card number is trapped and flagged by creating two entries: one as 34 1234 and a second as 341234, for every card. Other privacy vaults in security suites have input files grouped in the familiar four sets of four, with the last set blanked out for added security, to get around this kind of mishap.

The rest of the suite is more impressive in both design and execution. Our spyware test was passed thanks to the excellent detection built into the AntiVirus component, which managed to unearth both the adware and key logging tests we threw at it. The Outbreak Alert feature is also worth mentioning, as it actively protects you against the rapidly spreading exploits that seem to dominate today’s network-driven computing landscape. As long as you’ve got automatic updates toggled on, if a new high level threat is identified not only does Norton update your protection, but it gives you the peace of mind by knowing you’re protected there and then.

What doesn’t work, however, is the language filtering for the anti-spam module. Or at least it doesn’t in its incredibly stupid default mode of having all languages ticked as acceptable. What’s the point in a filter if you say everything can pass? Much better if Norton switches the default to the system language and lets the user opt in to receiving Chinese and Russian language spam.

Much more useful is the new feature that automatically synchronises the anti-spam allowed list with your POP3 address books, and that which automatically turns the firewall back on after a set period of time if you’ve turned it off. Spyware detection, ad-blocking, pop-up-blocking, comprehensive parental content controls, and tight integration of the anti-spam function with Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora and (new to this version) Yahoo! Mail all add up to a decent holistic approach to system security.
But our biggest reservation about this Symantec solution is that of system resource hogging, as usual. It’s better than the Norton of old, but not as good as F-Secure or iolo for example. At least the email virus-scanning is an improvement on McAfee, although the delay experienced in opening Word documents becomes tedious very quickly. Sadly, balance those few seconds lost against the integrity of our data and more often than not the pressures of time win out. There’s something to be said for ensuring productivity isn’t affected by security, and Norton and McAfee need to address this in their next-generation tools.

When put head-to-head against F-Secure, the simplicity of design, respect of resources and slightly better Labs performance mean that Norton will only appeal to those who need its specific features and don’t mind paying the premium.