By Gerry Egan, senior director, product management, Symantec Corp.

Today, we are excited to announce the release of the latest versions of our award-winning Norton core security products, which keep consumers safe from evolving threats in their daily online lives. The latest versions improve on the industry’s leading protection and performance, and are designed for compatibility with the new features of Windows 8.1.

According to Symantec research, Web attacks increased 30 percent in 2012, driven by the easy availability of malware toolkits and the high frequency of unpatched vulnerabilities on websites. As a result, consumers can be attacked even when they visit a legitimate website, an attack that puts their devices and personal information at risk. With the latest Norton releases, we are delivering the comprehensive security required to protect today’s devices against new and evolving threats, without impacting performance.

What’s New and Improved

Although you will notice some changes to the product user interfaces, the big changes in this release are “under the hood.” Each of our five patented layers of protection saw many improvements to security, performance and usability. Key enhancements include:

-          Advanced repair – An increasingly common byproduct of a modern malware infection is damage to critical Windows system files, requiring a time-consuming reinstall of the operating system. Drawing on Symantec’s Global Intelligence Network, new advanced repair capabilities leverage a broader set of Internet-connected resources to repair Windows system files that have been broken or crippled by malware, faster and with greater consistency.

-          Improved SONAR engine – Protecting against malware is a cat-and-mouse game in which we are continually challenged to improve our products in response to changes in malware techniques. This year we significantly improved the behavioral-based protection engine called SONAR, which operates on the premise that while the physical nature of malware changes, its behavior often does not. As a result, SONAR now allows the latest products to discover and shut down malware that attempts to disguise its bad behavior by operating inside legitimate Windows processes.

-          SONAR-assisted remediation and cleanup – Understanding what happened after a malware attack can be as tricky as deconstructing a crime scene. SONAR helps with the removal and cleanup of malware attempts by saving the evidence of the attack for later use by Norton’s repair technologies. This remediation helps to ensure that all traces of a malware attack are removed and a system is returned to its original state.

-          Simpler setup and management – For users who prefer to install via Web download or who don’t have a CD/DVD drive, this release improves the installation and setup experience. Users can quickly download and install the latest version of their product for their device type and subsequently ensure that all their devices are protected.

-          Faster performance – We know our users don’t want security getting in the way of their normal day-to-day interactions as they use their PC. So each year, we’ve made it a goal to keep improving the speed of our performance while ensuring that we continue to deliver world-class protection. This release continues to raise the bar. Based on recent testing, compared with last year’s releases, we have improved boot time by 15 percent, install speed by 10 percent and memory usage during scan by 100MBs, resulting in our fastest and lightest performance yet. (Source: PassMark, August 2013)

-          Enhanced Norton Identity Safe – This release brings a whole new look to our password management tool. It also includes improved form filling, with drag-and-drop functionality and full vault searches available directly from the toolbar to help manage passwords even more securely and conveniently.

The latest versions of Norton 360 Multi-Device[1], Norton 360, Norton Internet Security and Norton AntiVirus are now available for purchase in the U.S. through various retailers and online at www.norton.com. The MSRP for Norton 360 Multi-Device is $99.99, which provides one year of protection for up to five devices. The MSRP for Norton 360 is $89.99, which provides one year of protection for up to three PCs. The MSRP for Norton Internet Security is $79.99, which provides one year of protection for up to three PCs. The MSRP for Norton AntiVirus is $49.99, which provides one year of protection for one PC. In addition, Norton One will be updated with the features in the latest release of Norton 360. Customers with a valid product subscription are eligible to receive the latest product updates via the subscription service model. For more information, visit the Norton Update Center at http://updatecenter.norton.com. 

We are excited to bring you these latest releases and hope you’ll check them out and post your feedback in the Norton Community Forums.

[1] Certain Norton 360 Multi-Device product features and functionality available only on specific devices and operating systems