Which Norton security product is best for you?

Symantec’s Norton antivirus solutions comprise the world’s best-selling, top-notch security products that continue to protect user PCs, tablets and smartphones, year after year. Each passing year sees a continuous improvement in protection levels, in line with the ever-increasing intensity of malware attacks, both online and otherwise. Norton antivirus products come in three flavors – Norton Antivirus 2012, Norton Internet Security 2012 and Norton 360 v6.0. We compare these products in this post to help you choose one that works for you. For any problems with Norton, get in touch with a professional Norton technical support provider.

On the interface front, Norton Internet Security 2012 offers additional user controls for those who would like to have a greater control on advanced security settings. Norton 360 on the other hand, keeps it simple, letting users configure settings at one go and then forget about it. Although, if you were to dig a little deeper, you would find the same advanced controls available on Norton 360 as well.

When it comes to installation, all three products are easy to install and incorporate features to prevent existing malwares from interrupting the process. Specifically, a pre-installation scan precedes the NortonAntiVirus install procedure and destroys any malware detected during the scan; no differences between the three products here.

Norton security offers core protection from all infections such as viruses, spyware, Trojan horses, worms, bots and rootkits, across the entire product spectrum. However, Norton Internet Security 2012 and Norton 360 v6.0 go a few steps more to provide advanced protection features including prevention of identity theft and parental controls management. That is not to say there is no internet security available in the Norton AntiVirus 2012, in fact, this product provides the bare minimum cyber-protection, warning you of suspicious links, attachments/downloads in e-mails or instant messages, and preventing crimeware from covertly downloading to your computer.

The identity protection feature in Norton Internet Security and Norton 360 blocks phishing websites and warns you of visiting or transacting on other suspicious websites. In addition, the antivirus suite remembers your username/passwords so you don’t have to enter this information every time you login to your accounts.

Not only does this save time, it also protects you from malware such as keyloggers, which track your keystrokes and transmit sensitive information to cybercriminals online.  As the name implies, the parental controls management feature helps monitor your child’s activities and tracks people they interact with, online. Norton Internet Security and Norton 360 also secure your computer when connected to a public wireless network. A two-way firewall in these two security suites protects PCs from hackers.

Norton 360 v6.0 is the most advanced of the lot, with a few additional features in its kitty, which might be helpful to some users. The Backup and Restore feature creates automatic backups of important files/data totaling to 2GB and stores it on Symantec’s servers or on a user-designated external device. Users of Norton 360 premium edition get 25GB of free storage space.

Some users would benefit from the PC Tune up feature that auto-detects problems slowing down your PC and fixes them without requiring user intervention. It also cleans up your hard drive, ridding it of any unwanted files and boosts PC-startup time by enabling selective startup of necessary programs. Norton 360 also includes a professional-strength anti-spam filter that easily detects spam messages, even without an initial training.

Finally, all of Norton’s security suites have similar performance metrics, so this is not an issue if you need to choose between the three. To sum up, Norton 360 v6.0 has a lighter user interface and additional backup and tune up features, whereas, Norton Internet Security 2012 offers enhanced user controls. Both security packages are equipped with identity theft protection and parental controls management.

So which suite you choose depends on the scope of features you expect from the antivirus package. Should you choose to remove Norton antivirus in order to install another Norton package, you can contact a trusted Norton support provider.