Recently I bought NIS 2012 for 3 PCs. I installed it on 3PC and activated them over the internet. All subscriptions are current. So far everything works well. One of the three computers I need and want to use OFFLINE at (almost) all times. I have all my business and financial data on it and I do not want the PC on the internet or any network. This seems to be a problem for Norton Internnet Security 2012. After some days it stops working as it cannot verify the subscription status. Is there a way to get around that problem.
I do not need product updates. The Antivirus updates I dopwnload on another computer and run the update from a flash drive.
|s there a way to keep NIS 2012 working on my computer without being connected to the internet?
As I said above, all three installations are genuine and the subscriptions were verified on each computer. So there is nothing illegal going on.
NIS is not really designed to work in a strictly off-line mode. Much of its functionality depends on an Internet connection as there is a combination of local and cloud based features which cannot work as designed when you are not connected to the Internet. Also, any updates you apply from a flash drive includes only anti-virus signature updates which is not complete.
There are other updates for things such as web protection, antispam definitions and several others, not to mention program updates none of which can be updated without an Internet connection.
Even if you are not connected to a network, infections can be picked up from removable media such as USB media or CD/DVD's so you need to make sure any media you attach to this computer is confirmed to be clean on a computer which is fully up to date on NIS.
As far as the subscription status goes. How long are you disconnected before you see a problem? What does NIS tell you is its current status at that point?
No security product will function at its optimum when not connected to the Internet as they all need to have updates applied periodically.
I would suggest that every couple of days or so you connect the computer in question to the Internet long enough to run Live Update manually until there are no more updates. (reboot as requested) At that time you can also go to Support > Subscription Status to sync up the subscription to the Symantec server.
I think the two important tasks that have to be run to keep NIS 2012 working are LiveUpdate to keep the virus definitions up-to-date and the Norton Insight task to keep the trust ratings for your applications up-to-date. You can find out more information about Norton Insight in your help files, but if these trust ratings get out-of-date you could find that Norton Insight will prevent you from downloading and/or installing software updates on your computer if up-to-date information about SHA hash tags, digital signatures, etc. supplied to Symantec by the software manufacturer is not downloaded to your local hard drive.
As you mentioned, you can always download the latest virus definitions for NIS 2012 from the Symantec website (see here) to a flash drive and install them offline, but as far as I know the application ratings would still have to be updated while you're connected to the Internet - to update manually, go to Performance | Application Ratings and click the Refresh button. Your Windows OS should also to updated while you're connected to the Internet.
Just off the top of may head, I would recommend that you at least briefly connect to the Internet to perform the following:
a manual LiveUpdate once a day to ensure virus definitions, anti-spam, malicious website IP data, etc. is current
a manual Application Ratings (Norton Insight) update every second or third day
a manual Windows Update every Wednesday (to ensure you catch the monthly Patch Tuesday releases by Microsoft)
Truthfully, if the information on your computer is that important then performing proper backups (e.g., constant backups to a RAID array of independent disks and intermittent image backups so that you can restore your entire system) is the best way to protect your data. If you're disconnected from the Internet "almost all the time" the chance of a virus getting past NIS 2012 is fairly low, but do you have a recovery plan in place if you have a hardware failure and loose all the data on your hard drive?
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Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit SP2 * NIS 2011 v. 18.6.0.29 * IE 9.0 * Firefox 8.0.0 HP Pavilion dv6835ca, Intel Core2Duo CPU T5550 @ 1.83 GHz, 3.0 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS