Comment on Norton 360 2013 – 1 User / 3 PC [Download] by Hrafnkell Haraldsson.
Comprehensive,
I am working toward my master’s degree in cybersecurity. In doing so, I quickly became aware of how vulnerable most of us are. I have always had antivirus protection, but I realized what I had was not enough. Norton 360 2013 fills many of the gaps that previously existed in my defenses. Norton 360 213 protects you from:
*All types of viruses and spyware
*Online identity theft when you bank or shop
*Bad files and websites when you browse and share
*Phishing scams
*Theft of your personal information
*Hard-to-remove infections
*Spyware
*Spam
*Social network threats when you socialize
*Loss of files due to a hard drive crash or other mishap
*Slow PC performance
When you browse the Internet, Norton will tell you which sites are safe and which are not. For example, if you Google something, let’s say General Petraeus, since he is in the news as I write this, when the list of results come up you will see a little green box with an “ok” in it. If you mouse over this green box you will see a report about the website. Here you will see a summary. It might say something like, “Site is safe.” Great! You can look down at a list of specific factors:
* computer threats
* identity threats
* annoyance factors
* ecommerce safety threats
It will also tell you the status of the sites transaction protection and privacy protection, and if relevant, whether the site is a legitimate business. And if this does not satisfy you, you can click on a box to get a full report.
This may seem like more trouble than it is worth to some people, but believe me, it is worth knowing in advance about the site. There are all too many traps on the Internet for the unwary and the unwary WILL pay for their lack of caution.
I have heard that some people find Norton 360 too intrusive.I have not found that to be the case. It runs in the background and it does not noticeably affect my computer’s performance.
Norton 360 2013 gives you control over many settings, so if you want to customize your security settings, you can easily do this. If you go into your control panel you will see four boxes:
* security
* identity
* backup
* tuneup
If, for example, you click on security, you will see several options:
* view details
* run scans
* run live update (this will tell you, for example, that your definitions were updated 6 seconds ago)
* manage firewall
* run Norton Insight
Norton Insight is a nifty little program that speeds up your scans by determining, as they put it, “a trust level for the files that belong to well-known applications.” Trusted applications are excluded from security scans. With Norton 360 2013, many things take place in the background while your computer is idle. For example, with regards to Insight, “The processes that are related to Norton Insight run when your computer is idle. This way, the system performance remains high while you perform tasks on your computer.”
Under your firewall settings, you can set program rules, traffic rules (or block traffic altogether). You can go into the details of events monitoring as well. As Norton points out, “Intruders can gain access to your computer in the following ways without causing firewall alerts to appear:
*Launching and manipulating safe programs without your knowledge
*Attaching to a safe program without getting detected
*Launching trusted applications in hidden mode through command-line parameters
*Injecting code into other applications’ processes
*Modifying the URL of an Internet browser through Windows messages
*Bypassing firewall inspections by penetrating the Windows TCP/IP layer to send and receive data
*Using the documented interfaces that Windows Active Desktop provides to transmit data outside the network
*Using keylogger programs to monitor the keystrokes of a computer user, thereby gaining access to a user’s personal information
*Instantiating controlled COM objects to manipulate an application’s behavior
So as you can see, you can take as much responsibility for the nitty gritty as you desire, or simply allow Norton 360 to do its thing as unobtrusively as possible (and I personally find it pretty unobtrusive).
I am very happy with Norton 360 2013. I am not a IT person; my degrees were in history and philosophy, so this is a change for me. Many of the technical aspects of the subject remain unfamiliar to me. But based on what I do know, Norton is a sound method of protecting your pc and your home network, if you have one.
As others have noted, Norton 360 2013 installs easily. There were no hiccups and it took no time at all. Being able to tune up your PC’s performance and clean your registry is a nice bonus.
The interface is great – easy on the eyes, easy to…
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