Hey everyone,
I am a long-time user of Kaspersky Internet Security and their products and decided to switch over to Norton Internet Security after seeing that PC Mag and CNET gave it higher reviews.
However, I was wondering if you folks knew of any third party tests and studies that were done that show how well Norton did?
I really want to make sure I am sticking with a top notch product.
Thanks!!
Eric
Thank you for the information. What made YOU choose Norton over the competition?
Hi eric3312,
Welcome to the Norton Community.
Norton is consistently rated at or very near the top of the list in independant real-world tests. Below is one recent test done by AV Comparatives.
http://www.av-comparatives.org/images/stories/test/dyn/wpdt2011_1_en.pdf
It shows Norton at the top of the list with 99.3% over-all protection. Norton also has a very light footprint on your computer and a very nice set of features including Identity Safe among others.
As you are searching for reviews one thing to be careful about is that some testing done by different people are not real-world tests. Some try to test different pieces of a security product such as malware recogniition by signature and attempt to disable other components of the security software. This is not real-word because no one would actually run their security software in this fashion.
Real-world tests on the other hand tests the entire product with all components enabled and fully functioning.
Norton includes not only signature recognition (which does NOT work for Zero-day malware) but also things like SONAR (behavioral based), Reputation (how widely used), cloud based scans and other technologies.
Most products do include technologies other than just signature based detection but I think Norton is the best at this. SONAR is a proven technology and continues to get better year over year.
Hope this helps.
Best wishes.
Allen
I have tried a couple of other antivirus suites and applications. AVG, Comodo, Adaware and McAfee. Norton products consistently out-perform these four in my estimation, although all products change a great deal from year to year. Kas has always had a very good reputation, but I have heard that it is heavier on the system than previously. With Norton, I'm not sure that I like the direction to put more and more into cloud-reliant technology but I expect that it is the wave of the future.
I actually use KIS 2012 on one computer. I like both NIS and KIS - they are both excellent suites. KIS is a bit heavier on the system, although the 2012 version is very much improved from 2011. KIS is more configurable than NIS. KIS has a better firewall, and is faster at added definitions for new malware. NIS has a better behaviour analyzer/blocker (SONAR) and a more developed reputation system. KIS has more bugs (although again 2012 is improved compared to 2011). NIS updates are downloaded much faster. Kaspersky has a HTTP scanner that blocks malware before it reaches your computer; NIS hasn't, and has to clean up malware from temp folders instead. Both are good at false positives (relatively few), although NIS has it's WS Reputation that is a bit oversensitive. Anyway, I'd rate both of them at the top of the security suites on the market.