PCPro Review: Norton 360 v2

By Darien Graham-Smith

Verdict: A jack-of-all trades with many good features, but few points of excellence.
When Norton 360 first appeared last year its light footprint and ease of use were a breath of fresh air. Now 360 itself has been refreshed, evolving into the unimaginatively-named Norton 360 v2.0.

But very little is really new. The major advance is the incorporation of the anti-malware, firewall and web protection modules from Norton Internet Security (NIS) 2008. That’s not a bad thing: in our last security suites group test, NIS 2008 tied with Kaspersky for the title of best malware detector, and this month it went one better, detecting 26 out of 28 current threats against Kaspersky’s 24. It’s the same firewall, however, that, in our Labs test, left 15 open ports and six potential vulnerabilities exposed.

You also get some features from NIS 2008 that weren’t in the original 360. Norton Identity Safe encrypts passwords and other personal information, and automatically logs you into secure websites. The network monitoring module keeps an eye on wireless security and helps you manage your LAN.

But apart from these component upgrades, the package is basically unchanged. That’s a shame, because while the Norton 360 interface once impressed us with its simplicity, it’s now been overtaken in the usability stakes by several other packages, including …

Norton 360 v2 [PC Pro]
COMPANY: Symantec	PRICE: £51 (£60 inc VAT) - three-machine, one-year licence inc. 2GB online storage; £59 (£70 inc VAT) - three-machine, one-year licence inc. 10GB online storage
RATING:	ISSUE: 164 DATE: Apr 08