Norton Internet Security 2009

Symantec's antivirus products have historically always provided excellent detection and removal of malware. On the downside, that protection came at the price of often crippling system performance. Norton Internet Security 2009 has met that challenge head-on, finally providing a fully capable security product without the enormous overhead. Indeed, performance tweaks are the hallmark of Norton Internet Security 2009, which features 'pulse updates' to deliver more frequent and thus smaller signature updates, whitelisting to streamline scan times, and a lighter, sleeker footprint that installs in mere minutes.

Norton Internet Security 2009 features multiple sensors that monitor the activity levels of various components to make smarter decisions about what actions NIS 2009 should take - and when. For example, gamers will appreciate sensors that detect full screen mode in conjunction with gaming - suppressing non-essential alerts while still offering full protection in the background. Mobile users won't have to worry about laptop batteries draining because they forgot to disable a scheduled scan: NIS 2009 detects when a battery-powered laptop is idle and delays the scan accordingly.

Norton Insight makes note of trustworthy applications found on the drive(s) and adds those applications to a whitelist so they aren't unnecessarily scanned in the future. This type of integrity checking got its start with behavior-based scanners and is well suited for streamlining the performance of signature-based scanners as well. The first time you scan it may take an hour or more while it checks out all the files, but subsequent scans should finish in well under that - in our tests, the longest scan time after the initial scan was a short ten minutes.

Clean on reboot solves a problem we encountered in previous versions of NIS. Formerly, it was not uncommon for Symantec NIS to get in a virtual tug of war with a particularly stubborn infector - leaving the hapless user struggling to regain control of the system. Norton Internet Security 2009 marks these stubborn infectors and cleans them the next time the system is booted up - saving much unnecessary aggravation.

In addition to the standard signature detection, NIS 2009 includes SONAR, behavioral rules-based protection resulting from their 2005 acquisition of WholeSecurity. Browser protection is also built-in, detecting attempts to exploit known vulnerabilities. The rules-based protection isn't as proactive as the type of global outbreak detection afforded by F-Secure Internet Security 2009 and the browser protection is a bit signature-based in practice, but both features still add considerable protective value to the product. (For an added boost, consider augmenting with PC Tools ThreatFire to gain an extra advantage against newly emerging threats.)

The Norton Internet Security 2009 firewall provides inbound and outbound monitoring plus controls to beef up the security of your wireless router. Other features include spam and phishing filters, parental controls, and a privacy guard to protect personal details and passwords used online. The phishing filter included with NIS 2009 is considerably more capable than the phishing filters typically included with Internet security suites.

Norton Internet Security 2009 runs on Windows Vista, Windows XP Service Pack 2 (Pro and Home, and Windows XP Media Center. At approximately $70 USD retail, Norton Internet Security 2009 is a competitively priced, fully capable Internet security suite that distinguishes itself by being lighter and faster than most standalone antivirus scanners. The license is good for use on up to three home computers and includes free tech support as well as a sixty-day money back guarantee. Don't be swayed by Norton's past performance - this latest version is definitely worth a try.