Advertisement
Promo

Security threats Toolkit

Symantec releases public Norton 2009 betas

Robert Vamosi CNET News

Published: 16 Jul 2008 10:27 BST

  • Email
  • Trackback
  • Clip Link
  • Print friendly
  • Post Comment

On Monday, Symantec opened two of its Norton 2009 products to public beta.

Both Norton Internet Security 2009 and Norton AntiVirus 2009 feature new code that not only makes the scans and services run faster, but consumes fewer system resources, said Tom Powledge, Symantec vice president of consumer product management.

As an example, Powledge said that, where Norton Internet Security 2006 consumed roughly 300MB of hard-disk space, the 2009 version is coming in at around 100MB. Symantec has achieved this, in part, by reducing a number of redundancies introduced over the years. For example, previous versions of Norton Internet Security contained multiple copies of the antivirus signature database.

Read this

Q&A
Trend Micro: Antivirus industry lied for 20 years

Chief executive Eva Chen argues antivirus companies have over-hyped the effectiveness of their products, and misled customers, for years...

Read more +

For antivirus protection, a faster and lighter product has been achieved by focusing only on files that have changed. As hard drives fill with digital photos and songs — files that typically do not change — Norton is able to mark them as trusted and then ignore them on subsequent scans. Powledge said this results in big gains in speed, reducing the time taken to scan large drives.

Also, in order to keep up with the ever-changing malware on the internet today, the 2009 products with be updated roughly every 15 minutes with new signature files.

The public betas are available on the Symantec site. As with any beta software, users should make a full system backup first, and not run it on their main computer system.

Credit: Norton 2009 products open to public beta from CNET News

  • Email
  • Trackback
  • Clip Link
  • Print friendlyPrint with EPSON

Did you find this article useful?


Full Talkback thread

0 comments


Company/Topic Alerts

Create a new alert from the list below:





Video icon

Video

Sentry Posts Blog

Civil liberties groups attack file-sha...

Civil liberties and digital rights organisations have strongly criticised Lord Mandelson's Digital Economy Bill. Liberty said in a position paper on Tuesday that the bill, part of... More

Post a comment

Authentication risks all too human

Risks to successful online banking identification and authentication using smartcards involve a mixture of human and technological factors, according to the European Network and Information... More

1 comment

Opera censors Chinese content

Opera has updated the Chinese version of its mobile browser to stop users accessing restricted content. Opera Mini was updated on Friday from an international to a Chinese version,... More

2 comments


Skip Sub Navigation Links to CNET Brand Links

Help

Become part of the ZDNet community.

Newsletters