Review: Symantec Norton Internet Security 2006

The most expensive of the suites reviewed here, Symantec’s Norton Internet Security 2006 is a flexible and feature-rich product with the ability to integrate with other products from Symantec.

Your £54.99 per year buys an integrated suite, comprised of a firewall, anti-virus (with anti-spyware) and anti-spam software.

These are contained within Norton’s ‘Protection Center’. You also get placeholders allowing you to include features from Norton Systemworks with a link to buy extra software.

Its well laid out, hierarchical interface presents the basics in a way that’s easy to read while providing access to the very deepest of settings, including writing your own firewall rules, by drilling down into the menus.

Setup was reasonably painless. The firewall starts up in ‘learning’ mode, adding programs to the list of those allowed to use the Internet as it goes.

This avoids issues where the user has to know whether or not to grant access to processes they may never have heard of, before the software is fully up and running and able to guide their choices.

Outbreak alerts sent from the web and very clear status information give you a strong sense of security.

A built-in security inspector checks for common situations that can compromise your Windows system security.

These include inappropriately shared folders, user rights and poorly configured Windows services as well as guessable passwords and inappropriate entries in the Hosts file entries that could be used to redirect web page requests.

Parental controls extend beyond simple blocking of websites to Usenet newsgroups and control over which classes of applications can be run.

You could, for example, lock out instant messaging or networked games. All of these settings are configurable on a per-user basis, which is ideal for a shared family computer.

This article is part of a group test of internet security suites. Others are:
Intro and Editor's choice
Symantec Norton Internet Security 2006
Zonelabs Zonealarm Internet Security Suite 6
For other reviews in this Group Test, see the PDFs above