Among the new features included in the 2008 version of Norton Internet Security is a feature called “Norton Identity Safe,” designed to ensure that personal information and details of a user’s identity are safeguarded when shopping, banking or merely browsing online.
According to Symantec, Identity Safe “enables users to control which information is shared with websites, stores private information securely, and fills in passwords and web forms automatically.”
Identity Safe stores passwords and other confidential data in encrypted form, automatically retrieving the information upon request by the user, enabling users to do so quickly and conveniently while still protecting the data from “eavesdropping keystroke loggers,” the company said.
Symantec also claims to have significantly upgraded the performance of its software, stating that when compared to Norton Internet Security 2007, the 2008 user interface “responds 22 percent faster and completes a quick scan up to 39 percent faster.”
The company further asserted that when compared to the performance of nine competitors, the 2008 Norton software “leads across five key performance areas including boot time (20 percent faster), memory usage (69 percent less), full scan (12 percent faster), user interface response (54 percent faster) and download speed (31 percent faster).
Both new products are backed by the Symantec Online Network for Advanced Response (SONAR) behavioral detection technology, which is designed to protect against malicious code even before standard virus and spyware detection definitions have been created for a given threat.
For example, in Internet Security 2008, the SONAR system will “run a full scan every time an application attempts outbound communication, further protecting identity information by improving the firewall’s effectiveness against unknown threats,” according to Symantec.
Janice Chaffin, the group president of the consumer business unit at Symantec, said that the company’s 2008 line of products “[brings] valuable new protection technologies to block threats before they get a foothold in systems as well as significant performance improvements to make the end-user experience better than ever before,” adding that the new products will “help deliver on Symantec’s promise to provide confidence in a connected world.”
