NORTON 360

last week I bought a toshiba satellite A350, and included was a 12 month subscription for norton 360. Should I keep this, because I cant find any scheduler to set weekly scans, or scan setttings. the store guy said install it and forget it. is this practice sufficient to keep this notebook secure, or should i install something else. And please no A vs B as i have some ideas of what.

 

Hi DVD+R;

Here is a link which has instructions for setting weekly or monthly scans in Northon 360.
http://www.ezinstructions.com/norton360.html

I've used the last three incarnations of 360 (trials) and was never satisfied with it for several reasons.

Personally, I don't like an application that tries to do everything. What Norton and others who offer these extended functionality suites want to do is lock up all of your real and perceived security needs under their banner.
If you are comfortable with that, by all means keep it and use it- you paid for it !

But-
If you have set up a Norton account and have 360 registered, you are free to uninstall it and try something else.
If you wish to return to 360, access your Norton account and re-install. Be aware that Norton has, in the past, limited the number of times you are allowed to reinstall. For your own protection, be clear on their current rules.

My opinion is that you can do better if you like to be involved with your security and are comfortable with configuring separate applications.
Also, Macrium Reflect (freeware) is a superb backup solution and allows for bare metal recovery.
CCleaner and Glary Utillities are two excellent freeware applications that do a great job of removing the accumulated garbage, and Glary also includes additional features such as a very good disc analysis tool.

Finally, whatever else you employ for security, sandbox your browser and have at your disposal a program which will allow for reverting to a previous time (snapshot) should you encounter something your antivirus and/or firewall can't handle.
For me, Comodo Time Machine works beautifully, and it's free.

Sorry for the rather long-winded reply, but this is not a one-sentence subject; not if you want to consider alternatives.

Good luck !

 

As far as PC security goes, if you have Norton 360 installed and enabled, then your are pretty much protected from almost all security threats.

Norton 360 has been designed from a set it and forget it point of view. You should run a full system scan once and after that you do not need to run a scan, as 360 will not allow malware to get on your system.

As the previous commenter pointed out N360 is a all-in-one security suite and unlike the previous commenter I prefer to have only one software running on my system, providing me with real time protection, rather than a host of conflicting and competing software all running at once.

You can setup a schedule run within N360 by following the directions in the included help file. I personally find scheduling scans with N360 unnecessary, as after the first full scan N360 will not allow any malware to get onto your machine.

Since you have N360 free for 12 months, I recommend you keep it. You do not need anything else.

 

I think as an antimalware application you should keep it. I would only add something like a sandbox or a virtualizer just in case you might run into a new virus that hasn't been detected yet.

 

There are no specific scan settings . There are some settings for the real-time protection . Norton products are complete set and forget .

As for the scheduler . Have a look at "Tasks" and the settings . Scan is performed when the computer is idle (by default the machine is idle after 10 minutes of doing nothing) . There are other tasks as well which are done when idle.

Look forward for N 360 version 4.0 , coming soon . You'll be entitled to free upgrade to v4 . It is based on Norton Antivirus / IS version 2010.

 

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I believe Norton 360 3.X uses the same engine as Norton Internet Security 2010. I use the latter and it is excellent. NIS automatically does quick scans and full scans in the background. N360 adds the online backup option. Here is a PCmag.com review:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2343088,00.asp

One of the big pluses with the new engine is low impact on system resources which is especially important for a laptop. Assuming you like having a suite (Vs a group of individual apps) I recommend you keep it. N360 version 4 is in beta test at the moment. Keep an eye out for the release since you will be able to upgrade on your current license.

 

Keep in mind that are some important differences, however. Norton Internet Security 2010 includes SONAR2 and Download Insight, both of which are missing from Norton 360 3.0 (see here).

 

Why in the world did 360 drop SONAR?

 

360 v4 is in beta right now and should have it.

 

IIRC- I believe 360 version one had it as well.

 

360 for the most part is "Supposed" to be set and forget that's why it has so few options (or at least used to) compared to Norton Internet Security.

 

360 4.0 is getting the new version, SONAR2, which brings it in line with NIS 2010.

 

No , version 3.0 of N360 is based on NIS 2009

v4 is based on NIS 2010

 

I thought 360 version 1 was the beginning of the "new engine" and had SONAR 1 in 360 version 1. Then NAV incorporated that 360 engine into it's products over the past two years. Which was why I was surprised 360 did not have SONAR now. I believe 360 version 1 was the beginning of Norton's Genesis project which was supposed to be the build of a new engine. So I thought that Genisis engine is what these later, lighter Norton products had.

 

To clarify, Norton 360 3.0 does have the SONAR capability, but it is “version 1.” According to Symantec, Norton 360 4.0 will have the new SONAR2 technology (see here), as noted previously by Jyxent.

 

I'm with Symantec and am deeply familiar with N360.

A few points - no you do not need to install a sandbox or a virtualizer. Unlike stand alone av products, both Norton Internet Security and N360 have both a powerful IPS technology and a technology called, Browser Protection that guard against threats hidden in web pages and in network traffic.

Second, N360 V3 does have SONAR - which is our heauristic engine for scanning for new threats in files. N360 does not have SONAR 2 which looks for new threats in memory as programs execute (as opposed to just scanning when the file is accessed).

3rd N360 does include our very effective heauristic engine for identifying phishing attacks (far more effective than the phishing filters in your browser)

4 N360 has Pulse updates - so you get updates every 2-3 minutes against the latest threats

5. N360 automatically does scans - it identifies when your computer is idle and it does its scanning then. It also runs regular full scans.

6. you can set your own scan schedule - click the "settings" button on the main menu, select, "task scheduling", to the the "scheduling" tab.

7. If you run N360 v3 now you will automatically be eligible for v4 when it comes out (if your subscription is still active). v4 is in beta.

8. I disagree with those that recommend getting av from one vendor, firewall from another, sandbox from a third, IPS from a 4rth. If things don't work, who are you going to call? How are you going to diagnose the problem? I would strongly recommend you get a good security suite where the tools are designed to work together - and that have been thoroughly QA's to work together (and that have been reviewed by the press together)

 

Most people that add programs on there own, are ones that know how to fix problems / conflicts when they run into them. I personally like All in ones but there is some all in ones out there that just simply do more harm then good. Hence why that option sometimes is the best option.

 

Yes - some . Norton 360 is not of these some.

 

I never stated it was, That was meant in general not just at one product.

 

Me , too . I mean even though I quotted your words , my post was more to add information rather than saying your words are wrong . I know you were talking in general , I should have written it better