The latest version of Norton 360 4.0 is finally here. Norton 360, developed by Symantec, is marketed as an “all-in-one” security suite. The package includes a personal firewall, phishing protection, ability to detect and remove malware, file backup and PC maintenance capabilities. The previous Norton 360 v3 is based on Norton 2009 products and it’s no surprise that this latest Norton 360 v4 is based on Norton 2010.
Norton 360 v4 claims to come with a few new features such as Norton Insight, Norton Download Insight, SONAR 2 Behavioral Protection, Norton System Insight and Norton File Insight but honestly we’ve seen these features more than 5 months ago when Norton AV and IS 2010 was released. There are only 2 new features which are really new that is “Reputation service” and “Web-based Access to Backup Files”. The reputation service adds an additional layer of protection to detect viruses, Trojans, spyware, and other threats. Norton reputation service technology scrutinizes different attributes of files and applications in real-time to determine if they are safe. As for the Web-based Access to Backup Files feature, it allows you to retrieve and restore files that you backed up online anytime, anywhere, from virtually any computer with Internet access.
I ran a benchmark on Norton 360 v4 to compare against the previous Norton 360 v3 and it doesn’t seem to have much difference.
Application Launch Time
Norton 360 v3: 1.58582 seconds
Norton 360 v4: 1.09988 secondsBoot Time Increase
Norton 360 v3: 53.885 seconds
Norton 360 v4: 54.259 secondsIdle Memory Usage
Norton 360 v3: 3.7MB
Norton 360 v4: 16.8MBPeak Memory Usage
Norton 360 v3: 99.7MB
Norton 360 v4: 105.6MBInstallation Size
Norton 360 v3: 79.1MB
Norton 360 v4: 138MBFull Scan Time
Norton 360 v3: 361 seconds
Norton 360 v4: 390 secondsBifrost Trojan Crypted with Incognito Detection
Norton 360 v3: Runtime = NO, Scantime = NO
Norton 360 v4: Runtime = NO, Scantime = NO
One thing I don’t understand is why doesn’t Norton 360 v4 blocks the trojan on runtime when Norton Antivirus 2010 and Norton Internet Security 2010 able to successfully block it? Norton 360 v4 should be using the same NAV/NIS 2010 codebase for its antivirus and spyware detection unless I am wrong about it.
Since Norton products are subscription based, you can upgrade to v4 for free if you still have an active subscription. You cannot upgrade to v4 from LiveUpdate because you can only get small update patches and definition files. You will have to download the Norton 360 v4 setup file which is 138MB in size and just install over it. If you’re interested in trying out the latest Norton 360 v4, you can download the setup from the link below. After installation, it gives you a free 90 days subscription. Just for the record, this file was uploaded to the DigitalRiver’s server on 08 Feb 2010 22:42:00 GMT.