Built on a legacy of world-class security products, including Norton Antivirus, Norton Internet Security and Norton 360, our new offering, Norton Security, includes an array of ‘defense-in-depth’ technologies that have protected our customers for years. These include Network-based defense technologies such as our Firewall and Intrusion Protection System (IPS), File-based defense technologies (traditional core anti-virus capabilities), Reputation-based defense technologies (Insight) and Behavioral-based technologies (SONAR).
Many of these protection technologies have been enhanced and or completely rebuilt from the ground up. The many improvements you get to try out the beta version include:
New look and feel
The most obvious change is the new look and feel of the user interface. Delivering a clean and modern look, the Windows software sets the tone for our latest security offering across multiple operating systems.
Next Generation anti-malware engine
A new real-time malware detection engine fundamentally changes the way traditional file-based antivirus protection is delivered to our customers: Key features of this new engine include:
All of Symantec’s intelligence – over 4.3 trillion relationships – now powers all of Norton’s real-time protection. Every time you touch a file, Norton evaluates it against thousands of criteria to determine if it is an attack.
By relying on Norton’s cloud, the on-disk definitions are now 80% smaller. It’s our quickest and lightest Norton yet.
- Real-time definition updates of propagating malware. Historically as new viruses are discovered, new antivirus definitions have to be pushed out to customer machines. This process can take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours With this new engine, information about new threats is made instantly available via Norton’s cloud infrastructure. This greatly improves the speed at which users are of protection against new emerging threats.
Intelligent Protection
Included in this Beta are many features that deliver security smarter, faster and easier. Some of the new features include:
- Intelligent boot-time protection
We know you need to get to work (or play) quickly when you boot your PC. But those first few moments after you turn on your PC are crucial: that’s when your system is most vulnerable and malicious threats can attack. New features in this Beta release monitor system changes that can lead to boot-time infection. Detection of such changes triggers Norton to automatically enter aggressive boot-time protection mode.
- New aggressive threat detection heuristics
For the last few years, Norton Power Eraser has included a set of very aggressive threat detection heuristics (or “rules of thumb”) that identify new threats. Our newest offering includes heuristics that enable it to identify even the most resilient threats without risking a higher rate of false positives.
- Automatic aggressive botnet scanning triggers
A new set of network monitoring capabilities that trigger on suspicious outbound connection activity (for example: a botnet “command and control” center) will automatically prompt users to run Norton’s aggressive scan detection capabilities.
- Smart ping payload data-leakage protection
Ping messages, using the ICMP network protocol, allow applications to verify the status of a remote server. It’s like a computer application saying to a remote web site, “Hello, are you there?” and are referred to as “pings”. Many firewalls do not block these useful messages. But new malware variants piggy-back data onto these messages to send data to a remote server. This could include your sensitive data, perhaps your credit card data. Improvements to our Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) allow the flow of regular ping messages. But our IPS will block “non-standard” payloads that may be a malicious application trying to send out your information.
- Smart-sharing of enhanced Norton Community Watch malicious website data
We have enhanced our Norton Community Watch program to better track and share information about malicious websites. This information is used to provide earlier blocking of phishing or scam web sites before they have a chance to trick others into unknowingly providing personal data.
- Smarter plugin-less browser protection
Web browsers allow for new functions, or extensions, to be added. This allowed us to create security extensions for common web browsers. Unfortunately, this same extensibility also allows attackers easier access to deliver unwanted toolbars and redirect web traffic. To make them less prone to this, browsers increasingly restrict plug-ins and extensions. So we totally rebuilt several Norton security features in this Beta release to work outside of the traditional browser plug-in architecture. This increases the scalability of browser protection, enabling our customers to continue to use features like Norton Safe Web and Norton Web Protection without having to worry about browser plug-ins.
- Refined defenses against socially-engineered attacks
A socially engineered attack relies on the natural human tendency to trust others when information is presented in a certain way instead of relying solely on technological means to steal information. In this Beta release, many Norton protection technologies, including Safe Web, Scam Insight, Download Insight, and Anti-Phishing, have all been refined to better share information with each other. This sharing allows key attribute information about web sites (i.e., the site’s age, its popularity, its volume of malicious downloads and its prior history of collecting personally identifiable information) to determine if a site is being used as part of a new social-engineered attack scam.
- Next-generation SONAR technology
A redesigned SONAR engine detects never-before-seen threats based on the real-time behaviors of such threats. Now SONAR is even more effective against malware attacks that inject malicious threads into trusted application processes and applications that drop malicious files on the system.
Performance Improvements
We’ve included many new improvements to optimize performance and ensure you are protected. These improvements include:
- Performance tuned for the latest Windows 8.x updates
All Norton products are tested thoroughly with Microsoft’s ADK performance assessment user scenarios on the latest Windows 8 platforms.
- Conserving battery power on connected standbys
Norton passes the Windows 8 connected standby WHQL requirement – consuming less than 5% of battery life on a system in standby mode for 16 hours while connected to a network.
- Faster browser experience
Plug-in less browser protection means one less item to load into memory while browsing web sites. This improves the launch speed of your favorite browsers and browsing websites.
- Best-in-class real-time performance
The new Norton maintains the best-in-class performance while providing more protection. Performance is not a tradeoff option for new improved Norton.
