It’s no secret that Symantec has carved a nice target market for its protection suites for consumers. There’s Norton Antivirus for basic level of protection, Norton Internet Security to protect from any untowardness on the internet and Norton 360 that gives protection as well as backup options. This time we’re checking the middle version aka Norton Internet Security 2012 to see if its worth the spend or not.
The first and foremost thing you’ll notice is the installation time. If you’ve used any Norton product in the past few years, you’ll know Symantec has worked a lot on the installation. Just like the previous counterparts, the NIS 2012 is blazing fast to install. All it took was under a minute to install the suite and make my PC to a protected one.
Faster installs is not the only thing Symantec has improved. The startup as well as going through the menus and options in the NIS 2012 is faster and lot smoother from previous generations. Compared to the last year’s NIS edition, you might not see a wholesale change in the UI front but Symantec did attempt to make it clean. Menus and settings are nicely spaced out giving an unobtrusive experience. The upper half features all the important options that are required to protect the PC whereas the lower half is equipped with the sundry items, which you may or may not want to use it.
Before we delve into its extra features, let’s talk about its core, which is to protect the user machine. NIS 2012 is equipped with both, an antivirus suite and a firewall. Add Norton’s SONAR technology that monitors running applications for suspicious behavior and an reputation-based engine called Norton Insight, the combination you’ve got is quite potent. In fact, according to tests conducted by AV-Comparatives and AV-Test institute, NIS 2012 ranks number one for overall protection.
NIS 2012 also comes with Performance tab that gives a deep insight on whats going with the system resources.
This is the year of the cloud and Symantec has made sure they don’t miss the boat either. Symantec has added couple of cloud-based features like Norton Management and Identity Safe sync. Norton Management allows user to remotely add Norton-running devices, manage them, add products and renew them.
The next cloud-based feature is the Identity Safe sync. Now users will be able to take all the saved passwords and other information to any PC that has Identity Safe installed. Quite handy, I must say.
Rest of the extra features include an Activity Map that shows a live view of the cyber threats happening in a city whereas the Mobile menu is linked to the Norton Mobile Security page which we recently reviewed. Online Family is basically a tracking and rules tool that helps a parent track online activities of their child and setup different internet access rules for different children. Finally it’s the Backup option that allows you to check backup account details with Norton (in case you have) and Safe Web that checks the website’s as well as a search term’s safety risk. One thing that I disliked in Safe Web is that it redirects everything to a browser. It would’ve been better if the queries were answered right in the NIS 2012 interface.
So is it worth its asking price? With the proliferation of internet usage, it has become necessary to protect the user from any hacking, virus or phishing attack. Since NIS 2012 offers to protect from all of these (and some other features as well), it is a no-brainer that NIS 2012 is worth the penny. NIS 2012 sells for Rs. 1220 for a single PC license.
Leave a Reply