Advice Request Do you think Avira and/or Avast technologies will be integrated into Norton products?

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Anthony Qian

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Following the recent merge with Avast, NortonLifeLock now has control over two major AV companies, Avira and Avast. These two AV companies also have some industry-leading technologies, such as Avira's Avira Protection Cloud (APC), Avast's excellent virus signature, CyberCapture and IDP, and BullGuard's Sentry behavior blocker. If combining these features with Norton's existing outstanding IPS and Firewall, the next generation of Norton will be powerful. Also, such a combination is a critical step for Norton to move away from Broadcom and use its own technologies.

Do you think Avira and/or Avast technologies will be integrated into Norton products? What do you expect Norton to be after the merge?
 

Anthony Qian

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I presume that the acquisition will not affect Norton's products. I think that the emphasis is on gaining market share as a whole rather than technology.:coffee:
It is possible. But I find this on SEC's website:
The Combined Company will bring a differentiated approach to the Cyber Safety segment supported by greater scale in threat visibility, a geographically distributed cloud data platform and advanced AI-based automation. The Combined Company will be able to deliver: (i) giga-scale endpoint visibility, by gaining enhanced visibility on threat and behavioural trajectories across more than 500 million endpoints and networks; (ii) next-generation insight, supported by AI-based enrichment and best-in-class analytics of multi-factor, large-scale behaviour data in real time; (iii) autonomous defence, with automation of the detection pipeline by leveraging modern, featureless and explainable AI; and (iv) personalised protection, with AI-powered creation of a safe environment that matches the security, privacy and identity needs of individual users.
 

show-Zi

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If Norton wants to do that, the technology can be ported. I believe Norton prioritizes the means of securing customers. In other words, if the Norton family wants to hold much of the market, it is better to continue multiple software on their own routes as it is.
Rather, I'm a little worried about using the acquired vendor for mining.;)
 

RoboMan

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Well, it would not be smart to make a billionaire purchase and just discard everything you just bought. I'm certain that Norton will make use of all the advantages of the products they bought, such as the huge databases, and technology their products didn't have. But I also believe the antiviruses they bought won't merge into Norton, they'll probably stay separate.
 

Anthony Qian

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Well, it would not be smart to make a billionaire purchase and just discard everything you just bought. I'm certain that Norton will make use of all the advantages of the products they bought, such as the huge databases, and technology their products didn't have. But I also believe the antiviruses they bought won't merge into Norton, they'll probably stay separate.
Actually, I am curious about the relationship between NortonLifeLock and Broadcom. They might have some agreements in place for the use of Broadcom/Symantec technologies (IPS, SONAR, database...).:unsure:
 

RansomwareRemediation

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Well, it would not be smart to make a billionaire purchase and just discard everything you just bought. I'm certain that Norton will make use of all the advantages of the products they bought, such as the huge databases, and technology their products didn't have. But I also believe the antiviruses they bought won't merge into Norton, they'll probably stay separate.

What technologies does Norton have if you can tell? if it is one of the best av on the market.
 

Brahman

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Norton doesn't need new technologies,they were good in the past, present and may be in future too, what they were after was the user base, that could help them to stay up and fight against Microsoft. The one thing they are going to merge is the Av signatures and then they will cut down on the employees, make the company more uniform, trimmed and more efficient. All those products will remain separate in the eye of the consumer but underneath all, it will be the same av signatures to its core ( but they may have separate unique strength of their respective branding, like BullGuard with Sentry behavior blocker). In that way all those products will be stronger and will feel appealing to more customers ( at least this is the intention)
 

Anthony Qian

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Norton doesn't need new technologies,they were good in the past, present and may be in future too, what they were after was the user base, that could help them to stay up and fight against Microsoft. The one thing they are going to merge is the Av signatures and then they will cut down on the employees, make the company more uniform, trimmed and more efficient. All those products will remain separate in the eye of the consumer but underneath all, it will be the same av signatures to its core ( but they may have separate unique strength of their respective branding, like BullGuard with Sentry behavior blocker). In that way all those products will be stronger and will feel appealing to more customers ( at least this is the intention)
I use Norton for a long time and I think Norton can improve in the following 3 areas:
  1. Cloud protection. Avira's APC is an excellent example of good cloud protection. Norton takes hours to respond to new threats, whereas APC can respond in seconds.
  2. False positive rate. Norton's detections, especially WS.Reputation.1 and Heur.AdvML.B, have a high FP rate.
  3. Behavior detection. Norton's SONAR depends heavily on Internet connection and cannot recover encrypted files.
I think it will be difficult to merge the AV signatures because Symantec (Norton), Avira, and Avast use different methods to detect threats. Instead, merging cloud reputation datebases is possible.
 

show-Zi

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I use Norton for a long time and I think Norton can improve in the following 3 areas:
  1. Cloud protection. Avira's APC is an excellent example of good cloud protection. Norton takes hours to respond to new threats, whereas APC can respond in seconds.
  2. False positive rate. Norton's detections, especially WS.Reputation.1 and Heur.AdvML.B, have a high FP rate.
  3. Behavior detection. Norton's SONAR depends heavily on Internet connection and cannot recover encrypted files.
I think it will be difficult to merge the AV signatures because Symantec (Norton), Avira, and Avast use different methods to detect threats. Instead, merging cloud reputation datebases is possible.
Hmmm.... I'm beginning to think that the logic is "if you cook all the good ingredients together, the synergy will make the food taste better".
I believe that glitches and instability are proportional to the number of functions. I think the important thing is balance.

I believe that we have to seek the strongest security software. However, if that were possible, wouldn't some vendor have already perfected it? Unfortunately, if there is such a thing as the strongest thing in the security world, it would be malware and other malicious side.
 

Nightwater

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Jan 26, 2021
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Norton already has protection modules superior to Avast/AVG and Avira, the purchase was certainly thinking of the gigantic user base that these companies had, there was always news that Symantec was spying on its customers all the time, now they have the knife and the cheese on hand, although every antivirus program spies on you, remember: Americans love to spy on everything, hehe.
 

Anthony Qian

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Norton already has protection modules superior to Avast/AVG and Avira, the purchase was certainly thinking of the gigantic user base that these companies had, there was always news that Symantec was spying on its customers all the time, now they have the knife and the cheese on hand, although every antivirus program spies on you, remember: Americans love to spy on everything, hehe.
In fact, according to AV-Comparatives, Avast offers comparable protection to Norton and performs significantly better in terms of false positive control. Even if Norton's protection is better than Avast and Avira, its technology is currently owned by Broadcom...
 
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RansomwareRemediation

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In fact, according to AV-Comparatives, Avast offers comparable protection to Norton and performs significantly better in terms of false positive control. Even though Norton's protection is better than Avast and Avira, its technology is currently owned by Broadcom...
Avast is not better than Norton in bb and response vs new threat
 
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Andrew3000

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Avast is not better than Norton in bb and response vs new threat
That's not true. AVAST/AVG responds to new threats on average within 30 minutes (MAX), Norton takes ages to respond.
For instance, NetWalker Ransomware (.ps1) is not detected by any signatures or clouds, and you open it Norton cannot stop it since it injects itself into explorer.exe, making the PC unusable during encrypting, CPU 100% (SONAR doesn't activate).
It's no problem for AVG/AVAST to block, for example.
 

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