Norman Security Suite 10 Pro

While their interface styles and implementations differ widely, all security suites have the same core purpose. They're designed to keep your computer, your data, and your privacy safe from all kinds of attack. Some offer a wealth of configuration settings so you can tune your own protection; others aim to do the job with a minimum of user interaction. Norman Security Suite 10 Pro ($75.95/year direct for three licenses) falls squarely in the second camp. Its designers worked hard to eliminate any unnecessary complexity, and its components come pre-configured for maximum security. That said, some of them do a better job than others.

The suite's main window looks exactly like that of Norman's standalone antivirus product. Big buttons launch important tasks like checking for updates and launching a malware scan, and a history panel lists recent security events. You only see the difference when you switch to the settings page, where all of the suite-specific features are now enabled.

On that settings page you can turn entire components on or off. Note, though, that turning off a component literally uninstalls it, which can take a little while. Turning it back on similarly reinstalls the component, and this, too, can take time. From here you can also dig in for more detailed configuration, but even this second level of configuration emphasizes big, simple controls.

Shared Antivirus Protection
The antivirus protection offered by this suite is the same as what you get with Norman Antivirus 10. You'll want to read that article for full details. I'll summarize my findings here.

The independent labs that test Norman's antivirus technology give it generally good marks. ICSA Labs certifies it for virus detection and removal, and Virus Bulletin has awarded it VB100 certification in 80 percent of recent tests. To earn certification from AV-Test, a product needs at least 10 of 18 possible points; Norman got 13 points in the latest test. The chart below summarizes recent lab tests. For more information about the labs, please see How We Interpret Antivirus Lab Tests.

Norman tech support managed to deduce the unlock code for ransomware that initially prevented installation on one test system. Nobody else has managed that! On another system, malware damaged the installation. Uninstalling and reinstalling fixed that one.

During the install process, Norman offers to run a preinstall scan. This scan did some serious damage to one test system, quarantining or deleting many important Windows files. The product's designers plan to modify the preinstall scan so it logs exactly what it did. This collateral damage was repairable, but it took quite a while.

Norman detected 75 percent of the malware samples, the same as avast! Premier 8. Because avast! did a better job cleaning up what it detected, it earned 5.8 points for malware cleaning, beating Norman's 5.6. The top score among products tested with the current malware collection is 6.0, earned by Kaspersky PURE 3.0 Total Security. For full details on how I run this test, see How We Test Malware Removal.

Installed on a clean system, Norman detected and eliminated over 80 percent of my malware samples as soon as I opened the containing folder. I launched those that survived and noted the product's behavior. One rootkit that it did detect managed to fully install despite Norman's efforts. Norman detected 89 percent of the samples and scored 8.6. Ad-Aware Pro Security 10.5 and TrustPort Total Protection 2013 detected 94 percent of these samples. With 9.4 points, Ad-Aware has the best malware blocking score of products tested with my current sample set. For more about how I run the malware blocking test, see How We Test Malware Blocking.

The full Norman suite blocks access to known malware-hosting websites, a layer of protection not found in the standalone antivirus. When I tried to re-download my malware collection, the antivirus blocked 71 percent of those still available during the download process. The suite blocked 55 percent at the URL level and another 36 percent during download, for a total of 91 percent blocked. Only Ad-Aware blocked more of these samples, 92 percent of them.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/x97KeaIJVAs/0,2817,2420047,00.asp

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