Norton Internet Security 2012 - BETA

[Fábio Palma]

Citar:We at Norton are very excited to share the Beta release for Norton Internet Security and Norton Antivirus 2012 products with you. Below are descriptions of the new features and great enhancements provided with this release.



Protection



2012 introduces several new technologies to combat emerging threats.



Fake AV is one of the most visible and wide-spread threats that Internet users face today. Fake AV pretends to be security software and tempts the user to pay for it. Even worse, it can install additional malware on the system and claim the system is clean. New for 2012, we’ve included SONAR 4.0 and Norton Power Eraser 2.0 to help our customers combat Fake AV.



SONAR 4.0



With 2012 we are introducing SONAR Policy Enforcement – We now have the ability to convict a suspicious process based on a behavioral “profile.” To create these profiles, an analyst looks at the 500+ attributes that SONAR tracks and make a series of associations For example, let’s say a particular process tried to access the system folder and tried to call home, but does not have any running UI. Also, it downloaded more than 15 files the previous day. Any one of these things alone may not be “bad,” but taken as a whole, the behavioral profile is bad. The analyst will therefore make a rule that says if we see this string of behaviors, then we should stop the process from executing. Doing all of this is a big deal--we aren’t just looking at what the process does on your computer, we are also looking at its communication characteristics!



Sonar 4.0 also introduces protection against Non Process Threats (NPTs). As the name suggests, these threats are not active processes by themselves, but they inject themselves into legitimate active processes. SONAR 4.0 technology is able to much more aggressively remove threats on pre-infected machines.



Norton Power Eraser



Since we introduced Norton Power Eraser last year, it has exceeded our expectations and has been very well received by our customers and reviewers. Almost 90% of users claim it has resolved their issue without them having to contact us for support. This is a significant increase since we first introduced Norton Power Eraser a year ago, when the resolution rate started at 65%. Our goal was to make this the most effective tool possible and we are on our way to achieving that.



With the 2012 release, Norton Power Eraser runs in Windows Pre-Install Environment (WinPE) and will be accessible when running the Norton Bootable Recovery Tool. That means users get additional leverage over malware because Norton Power Eraser is run from a completely separate environment (WinPE) where the malware is not running and can scan the OS and more partitions.



Integration with Specialized Tools



As the threat landscape evolves, we are seeing the need for specialized malware removal tools more than ever before. As an example, we have a removal tool for the Tidserv (http://www.symantec.com/security_respons...08-3309-99) that has been very successful in helping users remove this highly prevalent rootkit. Often, the issue is that users often do not know that they are infected with Tidserv and therefore do not know they can be helped with this tool.



Both our scanning and network layer security components will now look out for threats that require removal tools and inform the customer that they may have a serious infection that requires a special removal tool. These users will be provided with a link to download these tools. This closes the gap and provides extended protection.



Google Chrome browser – best support ever

If Chrome is your favorite browser, you are in for a treat. 2012 comes full circle on the Chrome browser by supporting Identity Safe and Safe Web features. This means you will get the password and form-filling capability from Identity Safe, industry-leading phishing protection and SafeWeb site safety ratings for Web sites and search results. You can choose to view the toolbar in full, or close it and continue to get a Norton icon on the top right indicating the safety of the page.


With this most recent addition Norton continues to protect our users on one more platform when they surf online.



Performance



Users need to keep their computers running faster – we understand that. If a product doesn't use system resources judiciously and causes the computer to slow down; users may disable certain protection features and get vulnerable to attacks. Performance is of utmost importance for security products. At Norton, performance is always at the heart of the improvements we make to the products and we continue to innovate to achieve better performance. For the 2012 release, we are working in 50+ areas related to performance. To highlight a few high-level areas:

Reduction in footprint, resulting in smaller download and install sizes

Faster startup and shutdown

Enhanced scan time and file copy performance, resulting in faster scans and file access operations, and having very little or no impact in other application launches.

Enhanced network throughput, resulting in faster file copies over the network. More and more users are using sophisticated home networks and the changes in 2012 ensures that our security software gets out of their way for things like shared network file servers and other conveniences of today’s digital home.

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