Review: Norton Internet Security (NIS) 2012 Antivirus

The Internet is a dangerous place, and cyber criminals are getting more creative in ways to target you and your valuable personal information. Norton Internet Security is one of the most trusted brands out there for protecting computers from such attacks. Norton has been a big player in the security market for quite sometime now, and we have never doubted its capability to offer the best security services. We get into the details of what the Norton Internet Security (NIS) 2012 package has to offer…

A faster Installation and a Lower Start-up Time
Though this is not the features you would generally relate an Antivirus software with, but a lot of these softwares take a long time for getting installed. NIS 2012 gets installed in 60-90 seconds and you are then good-to-go once you update the latest virus-definition databases.

Also, you would notice that a majority of Antivirus softwares present in the Start-Up list increase your booting time, but thats not really the case with NIS 2012. It loads faster and is smoother to work with than its older versions.

A better and easy to use Interface
It is noted that the interface of the NIS 2012 has changed quite a bit to reduce the clutter and the menus make our life easier. You may observe that, the screen gets divided into two horizontal sections which give us details of how well we are secured on the basis of various upcoming virus threats.

Protection Features
The SONAR 4.0 technology used, helps find suspicious process based on a behavioral “profile”. SONAR 4.0 also introduces protection against Non Process Threats (NPTs). That means, the processes which are not exactly running but can infect other running processes are also been taken care of.

The Norton Power Eraser runs in Windows Pre-Install Environment (WinPE) and will be accessible when running the Norton Bootable Recovery Tool. Thus, it can scan the system from the OSs and other partitions where the Malware or suspicious softwares are not working; for better and uninterrupted scanning.

Norton Safe Search bar in Google Chrome lets users know SafeWeb site safety ratings for Web sites and search results; so as to stop the users from visiting sites with malicious content. Identity Safe provided in the browsers is the industry-leading phishing protection offered by NIS 2012.

The Identity Safe 2012 feature allows you to store sensitive data on secured Norton Cloud servers. You can save your Passwords, Credit card details, etc on Norton servers. You can use it on various computers as it creates your online profile in the Norton account.

The Download Insights feature tells you which application will crash your PC. A “Reliable” rating means that the chances of this program crashing are minimal; on the other end, “Very unstable” means that the chances of this program crashing are high.

The Bandwidth Metering of Norton is a very important feature for people who connect to different Internet devices regularly. You may not want Norton to use up a lot of bandwidth on a few of your devices, but its okay on some. You can put such bandwidth restrictions on the Norton software using these feature.

The In-Product Support feature helps you scan for any installation or configuration errors in the Norton software and also allows you to AutoFix all those issues. So, you are at the peace of your mind!

Price and Verdict
Norton Internet Security 2012 is not only an Antivirus software but also has an inbuilt Firewall too. Considering the increase in Internet crime, it is not advised to run your Computer without an Antivirus software. Also, the MRP of Rs. 1220 for a single PC license for a year is pretty affordable.

Now the question arises, Is NIS 2012 worth it? I would give it a 4/5 for the security features it offers at this price. I hope, it answers all your questions!

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