Norton Internet Security 2013 review

Norton’s 2013 suite brings a new front-end that, with its big borderless tiles, has clearly been inspired by Windows 8. It’s more accessible than last year’s model, but still not perfectly clear: several prominent links (such as Mobile, Online Family and Backup) don’t actually refer to built-in features, but steer you off to separate Symantec services. You’re left uncertain whether you’ve signed up for one product or several.

Features that are integrated into the suite include a Facebook wall scanner and Symantec’s Identity Safe password manager: these can be accessed via a (rather ugly) browser toolbar that’s automatically installed in Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer. With dozens of customisable settings, you can configure most aspects of Norton’s behaviour to suit your preferences, although this may overwhelm beginners.

As if to head off any suspicion of bloat, Norton’s performance monitor remains in prime position, showing key system events and resource usage. The System Insight tool also digs into your processes and startup items to identify those that might gobble up CPU power – as well as those that aren’t trusted by the Norton community. We found Norton itself added 13 seconds to our test system’s boot time, which is merely average; but the software’s overall 51MB RAM footprint was commendably low.

AV-Test found Norton Internet Security 2013 stopped 96% of zero-day threats and fully repaired a decent 84% of infected systems: these aren’t scores that place it among the winners, but they’re respectable enough. Overall, Norton Internet Security remains a decent package at a decent price.