Call me naive but I just discovered - the hard way - that NIS 2011 apparently shuts down all protection upon expiration. I am pretty diligent about renewing NIS on the always-on/ always-connected 9 PCs and 1 Mac in my business office. But this time I absent-mindedly allowed 1 to expire. The next day I noticed the "X" in the NIS tray icon, opened the control panel and saw all controls grayed out. I also noticed peculiar behavior on the PC and discovered it had become infected with all sorts of malware, to the degree that even the NIS recovery tools and several other popular scanners could not fully repair it. Ultimately I had to reload the OS as a last resort.
This is completely unacceptable. What legitimate reason does Symantec have for shutting down a security product and leaving users exposed? An expired subscription should result only in no updates, not a crippled product. As a long time customer/user of Norton security products I can't tell you how utterly unacceptable I find this. Hey Symantec --- ARE YOU LISTENING????