norton

Symantec is betting heavily that program behavior is the future battlefront of security and is making a big push in its 2010 security program lineup with a behavioral engine called Quorum.

Debuting Wednesday, both the basic Norton AntiVirus 2010 and the more robust Norton Internet Security 2010 will use Quorum, which Symantec is calling an advanced security network based both on traditional malware signatures and on reputation for both files and software.

The Quorum system uses the uniqueness of mutating malware against the threat itself, said Dan Nadir, director of product management for Norton AntiVirus and Norton Internet Security. Multiple … Read more

Welcome to this week's special edition of the Download.com newsletter. There have been some new developments in the world of Windows software that we wanted to share, starting with the arrival of iTunes 9 (for Windows and Mac).

Apple released iTunes 9 on Wednesday (that's version 9 on 9/9/09--oh, the symmetry) at a special music-themed event in San Francisco. On top of enhancements like some new navigation tabs, Apple has expanded the content that can be distributed through iTunes, including bonus content packages you get when you buy movies or whole music albums. iTunes 9 … Read more

The year 2010 may still officially be some months away, but that's not stopping security vendors from releasing major 2010 software upgrades to their antivirus apps and security suites. Just this week, Check Point Software released ZoneAlarm Internet Security 2010 and ZoneAlarm Extreme Security. What's the difference? The former is a complete suite with the familiar ZoneAlarm firewall, plus antivirus, antispyware, and parental controls. It costs $50. The latter lays on extra padding with Web browsing protection, antiphishing technology, and backup and system tune-up tools. It costs $70 for the complete set. How did the apps do? Read … Read more

Symantec is providing a fix for customers who got error messages after a patch deployment went awry for some Norton users, the company said on Tuesday.

The problem started last Wednesday when Symantec deployed patches for Norton AntiVirus 2009, Norton Internet Security 2009, and Norton 360 v3 via LiveUpdate. Some customers received error messages saying that there was a problem with the Symantec Service Framework.

The patch, which is supposed to communicate with the hardware to ensure that it is correctly installed, did not handle the response from the hardware properly after it was installed, a company spokeswoman said.

The … Read more

Symantec is out with its "Dirtiest Web Sites of Summer 2009," which it's calling "the worst of the worst" when it comes to malware threats.

The security vendor says that "48 percent of the Dirtiest Web Sites are, well, dirty--sites that feature adult content." That means that more than half the sites cover a wide range of other categories including legal services, catering, figure skating, and electronics shopping, according to the report.

On average, sites on the dirtiest list have 18,000 threats per site, but 40 of the sites have in excess … Read more

Kids search for the darndest things online.

In recent months, they've been looking for everything from Facebook and YouTube to Michael Jackson, Miley Cyrus, and someone named Fred. Oh, yes, they're also looking for pictures their parents probably don't want them to see.

That's the upshot of a new report from Symantec, based on use of its OnlineFamily.Norton service, which lets parents monitor and manage their kids' online activities, including Web searches. The service can track and report on a child's Internet whereabouts in real time, allowing parents to quickly learn of any content … Read more

People routinely look at me as if I'm nuts. Oh, wait, there's a second part to that sentence: People routinely look at me as if I'm nuts when I tell them I don't use any security software: no Zone Alarm, no Norton, nothing.

Instead, I rely on the security measures built into Windows and a few tricks I've learned. So far, it works fine for me.

That said, I usually advise friends and family members to install some kind of comprehensive security package. Because I consider all of you to be like family (yes, even … Read more

Norton Internet Security 2010 won't be available for a few more months, but the beta version is available now. In it, Symantec continues to build on the rejiggering it did last year. Built upon the dramatic performance improvements are deeper integration with other security tools like OnlineFamily. Norton, and the new Norton Insight for judging threats by community behavior as well as file definitions.

As a followup to my post from Tuesday about the ability for someone to view porn from within Bing, I just heard from a Symantec spokesperson that the company's Internet monitoring and filtering service, OnlineFamily.Norton (review), can't yet prevent Bing users from searching sexually explicit terms for Web sites or videos. The company plans to add Bing to its protected search engines in the next release. Other major search engines, including Google, are covered by the software's SafeSearch feature.

In the meantime, Symantec recommends that parents use OnlineFamily.Norton to block access to all of Bing--which … Read more