Norton 360 Premier Edition for PC, Smartphone and Tablets

**Humberto** · 27-05-2013

Norton 360 Premier is a complete pack of security tools that offers overall protection. With Norton Antivirus you can protect your single pc, while with Internet Security you can avoid various online threats, but if you are looking for a complete set of protection with parental control, mobile security, remote management, etc; then Norton 360 Premier is an idle choice. The new edition has great improvements in performance and memory usage. Being light on the system resources it works very well cleaning your system and giving all round protection. The package comes with additional tools and utilities which we will discuss later on. Being a power security program, it is well suited for a small network. Buying a single suite offers you around 3 to 5 pc security and even higher. Norton 360 is not just an antivirus or internet security pack, but a bit more than that. The prime feature of this tool includes a 24x7 threat monitoring, advance identity theft protection; automatic pc backup/tune-up and also protect/locate your android devices.

We got chance to test the 5 device pack which includes PC, Tablets and Smartphones. And of course some more benefits for Windows 8. The package offers Norton Studio App which is specifically designed for Windows 8. Through this tool you can manage your protection from single place. The app allows you to get stats on your system security at a single place. The app is available on Windows Store. All you need to do is register yourself on the Norton Security Products. A common account will help you to get information about your system protection online instantly. With the help of Remote Management feature you can control the device security settings and change them whenever you want. We will check that in more detail later on. Today we are almost not safe in any part of web.

The risk lies most when you are doing monetary transaction on web. Virus is more smartly designed to capture data. It is necessary that you must use top notch security tools which is ideal to deal with any kind of threat and along with that it should be easy to operate. Norton 360 Premier not only adds a pc level security but comes with system recovery tools and social media protection also. An ideal option to block numerous attacks.

Setup & Interface:

Norton 360 Premier has a clean interface. The home screen is divided into 4 primary categories which show that this tool is not just limited to virus cleaning. The 4 categories are Security, Identity, Backup and Tune-up. The last two sections provide additional benefits. Through backup you can keep your important files securely on cloud storage. Right now it offers a 25GB of online space which simply looks more than enough. The second one Tune-up helps to improve your system performance. It is a set of 7 tools to troubleshoot your pc and enhance its output. Tools like Disk Optimization, History cleaner, Startup Manager, etc; are quiet beneficial as well. Compared to older edition the new one is more optimized. It is low on memory but not really recommended for old system. Due to many tools in it sometime the security suite freezes in between. Let’s checkout each section and see what it offer.

Security:

The security settings deal with all scanning part. It also gives you details about scanned result. You can update the antivirus from the same section and change firewall options also. Now there are two important things here to check. First is the Firewall and second is Norton Insight. Norton 360 offers advance firewall. It is nicely detailed and divided based on different blocking activities. Inside the same place you can manage firewall separately for programs, network/internet traffic, browser/intrusion protection and many more. Norton Insight gives you a short glimpse on file reputation. It tells you about the file/program reputation whether they can be risky to use or not. Norton Insight has number of different filters through which you can get the overall protection status of your pc.

This is a really awesome feature here which you can hardly find in any other security suite. A kind of great security audit tools for advance users. Norton Insight is a bit resource hungry. The tool tries to scan each and every file working in your system and gives out the risk it involves. This helps to predict issues before any serious problem occur in your pc.

**Humberto** · 27-05-2013

Identity:

Norton 360 keeps Identity Protection on the top of the list. That simply means how important it is. Today we blindly surf on internet, download files and even visit websites which can easily infect our system. Identity protection involves with process of hiding our information from the web. So that hacker cannot track our system and attack on them. This consist a mixture of Identify Safe and Safer Surfing. The settings provided under the same are simple to use. The settings include Anti-Phishing and Norton Safe Web. This when enabled tries to ensure that the website that you are visiting must be safe and has no malicious content. It is capable of blocking malicious pages, offering site rating in SERP and SCAM Insight. To use this you will have to first create an account in Norton Identify Safe Vault.

Once the account is created you can surf blindly on any part of the web. If the site is not safe Norton will simply block it giving you prior notification. This Identify Safe section is also a kind of Password Manager where you can keep your logins. Just click on Identify Safe through settings and you can configure important details.

Backup:

Adding a backup tool on an antivirus is a smart thinking. Backup is a very crucial part of our day to day life, which we ignore. And it is really boring to use a third party application. But if you have Norton 360 then you can configure a simple automated backup procedure through the antivirus itself. The backup is linked with 25GB cloud storage that you get when you buy the pack. You can save the files online also. It is quite simple to use. When you click on Run Backup, the next window allows you a different backup sets. You can add your own kind of settings, to run a backup at specific time.

It is divided into 3 simple steps: What to Backup (File/Folder), Where to Backup (Location) & When to Backup (Time). You can create a safe backup process for your system. Norton 360 will work on your behalf next time if properly configured. Whatever files you choose can be stored online also. The 25GB storage appears as partition in Norton Backup. And there is an option available by which you can throttle the upload bandwidth through slider.

Tune-up:

This is some added up goodies. I use a set of different tools like Disk Cleaner, Defragger, etc; to improve my system output. But with Norton 360 those things are useless. The Tune-up section offers 5 different tools. One among them is Disk Optimization. This tool gives you information about your hard drive status. A kind of advance Defragging utility. Another one is File Cleanup. It removes the requirement of running a system cleanup to wipe out temp files. The tool can scan Internet and Windows Temp files and clean them as needed. One more powerful utility in the same section is Registry Cleanup. Ample of time I install and remove application from my pc which generates lot of incomplete registry entries. This puts impact on the system performance also. It is really effective and to some extent improves windows stability also.

You can get detail on each and every registry files cleaned by the tool. Two more tools lies in the same section, that are, Diagnostic Report and Startup Manager. The first one gives you information about your entire system. It checks the hardware, OS, startup program, installed software, etc; and gives you where the issue lies. For example if you had turned off automatic updates you will get an error in the report. Second error I got in RAM, it was stated as low. Diagnostic Report is really effective in finding many issues at the same place associated with different things. The last one Startup Manager is just another msconfig alternative. You can enable and disable programs that start first after windows boot.

**Humberto** · 27-05-2013

Tasks:

There is a Task section in Norton 360 Premiere that is further divided into 3 categories - General, Backup and Pc Tune-up Task. From single place you can manage number of things. The General section helps you to run scans and antivirus updates. You can also check security history and vulnerability protection from this place. While at the end it offers you to view a Network Security Map. If your system is on a LAN network then it gives you a simple network map showing you the list of pc on the network. It is possible to configure Remote Management from this place. The backup section just offers you all backup tasks at one place and in the last PC Tune-up feature you can run all tune-utilities from single place. The task section offers a quick accessibility feature where you get ample of things at one place.

Settings:

This is the last section which we will discuss. For every antivirus it is very important to have a detailed settings section. This is helpful for both a novice and advanced users. If the settings section is cluttered with unwanted stuff then it becomes a bit complicated to configure the antivirus settings. The setting panel of Norton 360 is simple to understand. From backup settings to firewall, antivirus, antispam, you can customize anything from here. Also with simple check box you can enable and disable ample of additional features.

Norton Management:

Norton 360 comes with one more additional support which is called as Norton Management. This is not an integrated utility but a separate tool to manage protection of different devices. It is actually web based link. The tool just helps you to manage Norton Products installed on your pc. You can update the antivirus and renew it. This does not require any great networking skills.

Mobile Security:

After overall protection, Mobile security is the second best feature of Norton 360 Premier. It is not just an antivirus but more than that. Supported by call blocking, anti-theft protection, data backup and cloud storage the mobile app is simply great. Ideal choice for tablets and smartphones. It is also lightweight. The antivirus works fine on any device without slowing it down. You can download that directly from Google Play and activate the product through Norton Account or through the license key. There is a different application here. I had listed them below with short description.

**Humberto** · 27-05-2013

Norton Security Antivirus: Protects your mobile from malware, virus, and theft. Once installed through mobilesecurity.norton.com you can track the mobile. You can lock it, swipe the phone data, capture the image of a person who is using device, etc. It is a powerful application.

Norton Anti-Theft: Helps you to locate the exact position of your mobile in case it’s lost. Also protects your mobile privacy. There are ample of anti-theft app, but this one is more intact.

Norton Identity Safe password: A kind of powerful password manager tool that helps you to record your password and login details. You can simply login to any website security without losing your login data. It is secure and works fine with any website.

Norton Family parental control: Through this app you can get the parental control settings of Norton 360 Premier. It does not matter you are near to your pc or not. You can keep a close eye on kid’s web surfing habits. Today it is really important that you must use a powerful parental control application which can help you to protect small kids from the dark part of internet. If anyone still tries to access the website you can configure a custom email alert as well.

Norton Zone cloud sharing: This app is a free online storage solution by Symantec. When you buy Norton 360 you get 25GB online storage space which you can access through this application also. It offers you a safe location to keep your files and access them whenever needed.

Norton Promotions : Norton is offering a 1 year free subscription of Norton Internet Security Suite 1 User 2012 and Norton Security Suite 1 user 2013 on 1 Year subscription. That means by paying for a single year you can get 2 Years Subscription.

Conclusion:

Norton 360 Premiere is a powerful pack of security tools that helps you to keep your system secure from various threats. The features here are not just limited to the pc. You can have the same type of security program for your mobile phone/tablets as well. Supported by Android based devices you can protect the device from various threat. More advance features like remote management, parental control, etc; makes it a more powerful protection package. The only issue lies here is with the performance. If you use different set of service at the same time the antivirus crashes on Windows.

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