Norton by Symantec

Norton by Symantec is one of the most widely used antivirus software available on the market currently. It’s true that the product is slightly more expensive compared to its rivals; however, its features make its price quite justifiable. The Premium Plan of the antivirus comes packed with a series of advanced features, 25GB of online storage, a backup solution, and more.

About Norton by Symantec

Available Packages and Pricing

The company has recently updated its antivirus solutions and is currently offering four different packages. They are as follows:

Norton Antivirus Plus: It’s a basic package designed to protect one Mac or PC from all kinds of ransomware and malware. In addition, it comes with anti-phishing tools. smart firewall, and a password manager. The total storage offered with this package is 2 GB.

Norton 360 Standard: This package is meant to protect a single device and is compatible both with Android and iOS. The package offers webcam protection, dark web monitoring, a VPN service, and 1 GB of cloud storage. The package is priced at $39.99 per year.

Norton 360 Deluxe: It offers the same features as the 360 Deluxe but for five devices. This comes with a total storage of 50 GB. The only additional feature you will get with this package is parental control. The package is priced at $49.99 per year.

Norton 360 with LifeLock: This is basically the Deluxe Package along with various features for more comprehensive identity theft protection. The package is priced at $99.99 per year.

Each of the above packages comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. The company would issue a refund if Norton cannot protect your devices from virus attacks.

Features

When we tested Norton by Symantec, we found that the antivirus is capable of detecting and blocking as much as 99.3 percent of threats. This makes the product a better performer than almost all its rivals.

Whenever you try to enter a malware-infected website, Norton will prevent you from doing so showing warning messages. On the other hand, the antivirus will stop you from downloading infected files by stopping the download process altogether and showing warning messages.

Many complain that Norton slows down computers when performing malware scans. However, the company has fixed this. Tests revealed computer performance didn’t drop much after the installation of the software.

When performing full system scans, however, the speed drops by around 30 percent. This shouldn’t bother you much as that’s something you will face when using most antivirus software.

Read on to know more about the product’s performance.

1. Virus Protection: The antivirus works by moving all viruses into its quarantine folder. This protects your computer from any harm. You will be notified whenever the antivirus stops any infected file.Norton by Symantec takes around an hour for scanning each hard drive. This time can be reduced to 20 minutes by adding all your trustworthy files to the whitelist of the antivirus. For a quick scan, on the other hand, Norton takes a little over 3 minutes.
2. Malware Protection: Norton offers three-layer protection against malware. These include signature matching. This feature matches the software to the database of identified malware packages.The malware protection feature of Norton has been enhanced further with the introduction of heuristic analysis. For those who don’t know, heuristic analysis is a process that controls how software behaves and checks codes of all-new programs. This allows Norton to detect unknown malware promptly and stop them from harming your devices.What’s more, Norton works by releasing new update signatures multiple times every day. The program analyzes samples gathered from your machines on its cloud servers all through the day. This allows it to identify all elements that might be harmful to your devices.

   The identified items are then fixed by Norton’s team and sent to your machines as signature updates.

3. Ransomware and Phishing Detection: Each of the four packages offered by Norton comes with the ransomware detection feature. This means you can do online shopping without falling prey to malware stealing or compromising your confidential data. In addition, Norton will also prevent all files saved in your machine from being encrypted.

The Norton packages mentioned above also come with the anti-phishing feature. As a result, you will be stopped every time you try to access a dangerous website or email.

How to use Norton by Symantec?

Norton is an extremely user-friendly product. You are unlikely to face any problem when installing or using this antivirus.

To install the program, you will need to download a 1 MB patch, which will turn into a 175 MB installation. Then, you will have to type your activation code into the given field, and you are ready to go.

Next, you will begin a quick scan. You will need to wait for around seven minutes for the antivirus to check your entire system. If the software doesn’t find anything unscrupulous, its front page will become green in color. If your machine is infected, you will see a red-colored X beside the software’s icon and there will also be components listed under threat.

You will get to choose from the following scanning options when using Norton:

• Fast scan to scan all local discs and files
• Full scan to scan all hard drives
• Stealth item and rootkit scan
• Compressed file scanning and repairing
• Network scanning during a custom scan and full scan
• Cookies scan
• Heuristic protection

Final verdict

Investing in Norton by Symantec would be a good decision both for business owners and users looking for an antivirus for their home computer. If you are not bothered by the temporary loss of performance of your machine during system scans, this product is the best the market currently has.