Security firm Symantec is aiming for “zero impact” with its next range of products, according to product marketing director Con Mallon.

Explaining that people see security products as "big, fat and slow", Mr Mallon added that "we've been doing something about this".

“For our new products, we’re thinking of doing something completely different… we’ve set ourselves some pretty ambitious goals," he said.

Symantec says it is working towards products that install in less than one minute, add less than 10 seconds to the time a computer takes to start and take up less than 100MB of hard disk space.

The company also plans to use “a massive whitelist” of trusted files in order to reduce the time taken when scanning for viruses.

“We’ve come up with a philosophy of ‘if we scan less, it’ll be faster by default," Mallon explained.

Symantec's new 2009 range of security products is expected to arrive in September. The company is also developing a new “family security” product, designed to allow parents and children to collaborate on a set of rules for acceptable internet use.