Symantec Corp. is announcing, and taking preorders, for new versions of Norton AntiVirus, Norton Personal Firewall, and Norton Internet Security beginning on Tuesday. The products will ship later this month.
In updating the three products, the goal was to take advantage of Mac OS X adoption while continuing to support the Mac OS 9 faithful, according to Bill Rosenkrantz, senior product manager of Symantec’s Consumer and Client Product Delivery. To do that, the products will come with versions of the applications for both operating systems on one CD.
“We’re continuing to expand the feature set of our product line,” Rosenkrantz told MacCentral. “We’ve been listening to users and consumers to offer features that appeal to the whole market of Mac users. We feel we have a lot of applications that will benefit the general public, and we want to make sure that all users are aware of that.”
Norton AntiVirus 9.0
Norton AntiVirus 9.0 is written in Cocoa, Apple’s object-oriented development platform, and is completely Mac OS X native. Among the new features is the ability to scan and disinfect Wintel viruses, even if they wouldn’t directly affect your system.
“A lot of Mac users work in multi-platform environments and don’t want to be a ‘Typhoid Mary’ type of carrier who gives viruses to friends and co-workers,” Rosenkrantz said.
AntiVirus 9.0 can also quarantine and isolate “unrepairable” files. It also provides faster virus definition downloads with the enhanced LiveUpdate feature.
“You can now download smaller files as needed, rather than one big virus definition download at one time,” Rosenkrantz said. “This makes LiveUpdates significantly faster.”
Norton AntiVirus 9.0 can scan and repair compressed files. An improved Auto-Protect capability increases virus protection by, among other things, scanning drives upon mounting.
“The application’s new virus engine can open, repair and close in one swoop,” Rosenkrantz said. “We think the fact that you now don’t have to uncompress a file to protect it and the fact that AntiVirus scans drives upon mounting for added protection are very useful features since so much file sharing is going on via the Internet.”
Norton AntiVirus 9.0 costs $69.95. Upgrades from previous versions are $39.95.
Norton Personal Firewall 3.0
Like AntiVirus 9.0, Norton Personal Firewall 3.0 is written in Cocoa and is completely Mac OS X native. It also now offers the ability to block outgoing connections and offers a new Set-Up Assistant for easier configuration.
“We think there’s a perception that if you use a Mac online you’re safe and sound,” Rosenkrantz said. “To some degree that’s true, but Mac users have a very high penetration of the broadband market and most hackers know no boundaries. For this reason, we think Personal Firewall is a good tool for any Mac user.”
Personal Firewall 3.0 now detects services, such as file sharing, when they start and lets you change firewall settings on the fly. The new version allows you to see when someone is connected to your computer; if you wish, you can disconnect them. There’s also a new Visual Tracking feature that identifies online perpetrators.
“Visual Tracking can tell you thinks such as who the ‘intruder’ is, where he came from, his e-mail address, the city his server is in, and more,” Rosenkrantz said. “It’s a nice consumer benefit and provides a user-friendly interface for those who don’t understand firewalls.”
Norton Personal Firewall 3.0 costs $69.95. Upgrades from previous versions are $39.95.
Norton Internet Security 3.0
Norton Internet Security 3.0 includes full versions of Norton AntiVirus 9.0 and Norton Personal Firewall 3.0, as well as Norton Privacy Control and Aladdin iClean.
The enhanced Norton Privacy Control prevents the sending of confidential information through instant messengers, file sharing, or via “smart” spam. It also tracks statistics to allow users to monitor key metrics. iClean is a tool for removing old and unwanted applications, files and more.
Internet Security 3.0 also boasts new parental controls to prevent access to “inappropriate” Web content. It ships with a list of such sites, but you can override the ones that you feel are appropriate, as well as add your own list of “undesirable” sites to the list.
Improved ad blocking in Internet Security 3.0 prevents more types of Web-based ad delivery (such as JavaScript-based ones), Rosenkrantz said.
“The difference between our product and browser-based ones is that they are more binary and tend to block too many things,” he added. “Ours looks for ad-specific HTML or Java.”
Norton Internet Security 3.0 costs $99.95. Upgrades from previous versions are $69.95.
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