Norman

Is NVC (Norman Virus control) good antivirus?

 

This Antivirus is mainly used in the corporate IT field and is less used as a 'home' AV. Rather expensive too at $60/annum, although there is a'free' offer available;

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=20751

if you don't mind having the OpiStat Program on your computer!!!


Some recent reviews of the program are here;

http://pcmag.dit.net/reviews/review.php?id=EpkAlFEZVyrMveALGg

http://www.software-antivirus.com/program/norman-antivirus-review.html

Over at virus bulletin they have received 11 passes and 22 fails but recent results, ignoring Netware etc, show a relatively good detection rate but not the best. Over at checkvir, again results have been fairly mixed;

http://www.checkvir.com/index.php?CN=1&CIE=0

However, NVC has sandbox technology which is their system for detecting unknown viruses and other malware and recent versions have now incorporated e-mail scanning.

I have tested NVC several times but I have found the program to be resource hungry and the interface is not very clear. Scan speed was very slow as well. Therefore, I would not recommend the program for newbies or for those with older machines.

Overall, there are better AV programs available at the present time, particularly if you decide to pay for the program.

 

My experience with Norman is slightly different from that of Blackcats, in the areas concerning resource usage and scan speed. I found Norman's trial version quite light on resources (on-access & on-demand). Its on-demand scanning (all file scanning) is also quite fast compared to avast!, Bitdefender, DrWeb, and KAV. It is also quite accurate with only one false positive (false positive found by NVC's sandbox) on my computer (other AV's I have tried... averaged 1-3 false positives on my computer). Real time monitor also did its job quite well, though failed to remove some worms from my floppy. I do question how effective its sandbox technology is though, after it picked up one false positive, and failed to detect a third variant when it successfully detected the first two with signatures. Unpacking I do not think is particularly strong either, as they probably depend on its sandbox for packed malware.

It does have some nice things going for it, but does not seem to be particularly strong in any one area. And even in the areas it is good in, one can probably name an AV that is even better in that area. So I agree with Blackcat in that there are other better AV programs out there at this time.