Online thieves will steal anything, including your money, your identity, even your good name. Worse, as their methods become more and more devious, they're becoming harder to stop. Experts say Internet crime now happens about once every quarter of a second.
According to the FBI, white collar criminals -- even those
without technical backgrounds -- are making tons of money trading credit card numbers and other personal information over the Internet black market.
"It's like a bazaar, where you can buy and sell
anything," says a spokesperson for
Symantec Corporation, makers of popular
Norton AntiVirus and
Norton Internet Security. "Oddly, in today's economy, a credit card from the U.K. will actually fetch a better price than one from the U.S."
To avoid signature-based detection, cyber criminals continually re-write threat code, sometimes sending a variation to as few as a dozen targets. This is why Symantec developed a new behavior-based system, called "
Quorum."
Quorum tracks files and applications based on attributes, such as the age of the file, its download source, digital signature, and prevalence. These attributes are then combined using complex algorithms to determine a "reputation."
Norton continually re-evaluates a file's reputation as it proliferates. Caution is highest when its nature is unknown, unlike some systems that give unconfirmed threats the benefit of the doubt. Quorum proactively guards against zero-day attacks and other fast-appearing threats that can wreck havoc before their existence is known.
Purchasing a Norton product gets you the software itself and a one-year subscription to receive the latest updates. The suggested retail price for
Norton Internet Security 2010, which can be installed on up to three family-owned PCs, is
$70. A special edition for less powerful, mini-notebook computers, called
Norton Internet Security 2010 Netbook Edition, has also joined the product lineup. A single license of
Norton AntiVirus 2010 lists for
$40.
The new versions all support
Microsoft Windows 7, as well as
Windows Vista and
Windows XP. If you own
Norton Internet Security 2009 or
Norton AntiVirus 2009, the good news is both will support Microsoft Windows 7 by the time Microsoft's new desktop operating system launches on
October 22nd. The company says Windows 7 compatibility updates will be delivered automatically via
LiveUpdate to customers with valid subscriptions.
Symantec security products once had a reputation for being "memory hogs," slowing all but the most powerful PCs to a crawl. The company addressed the problem in earnest last year and turned everything around. Its products are now among the lightest, in terms of system impact.
The Norton console now flips to reveal a graphical display depicting the resource consumption of programs and processes running on your computer. You can actually drill down and see where Norton ranks, which Symantec says is usually among the lowest.
The company has also rolled out a new free, online risk assessment tool, called the
Norton Online Risk Calculator, for determining your own risk of attack and quantifying how much your information and assets are worth.
Norton Internet Security has topped my list of best Internet security suites since the 2009 version made its debut, in contrast to previous versions, which always failed to impress. When I heard Symantec was coming out with NIS 2010, I was afraid they would screw-up a good thing. Happily, it's even better. Kudos!
