Symantec Launches All-in-One Security App

By NewsFactor Network | February 26, 2007

In an age when we use computers for virtually everything, yet doing so exposes us to all sorts of financial schemes and computer-crashing viruses, leading security software vendors have decided to rethink protection from the ground up.

Symantec Corp. today releases its answer to computer threats with Norton 360. The software aims to block PCs from the ever-more-sophisticated malware proliferating on the Web and works to protect PC users from their own bad computing habits, such as neglecting to back up files.

“These days, there’s so much spyware, adware, malicious pop ups. At the end of the day, people are not sure if their computer is safe or not,” said Mark Kanok, product manager of Norton 360. “People say … I just want something that handles all the threats.”

Norton 360 is designed to do just that, he said, and in a jargon-free, user-friendly manner that will take some of the mystery out of installing security software.

“Norton 360 is our biggest innovation in the consumer market since … 1999,” Kanok said. The program will sell for $79.99 as a download from Symantec, http://www.symantec.com, starting today and at electronic retailers next week.

Cupertino-based Symantec came out with Norton AntiVirus in 1990 to protect people from computer viruses. Norton AntiVirus had its last major revision in 1999, when people used PCs mostly for standalone applications and only a slim minority used the Web, mainly to exchange e-mail and surf for information.

Today, three-quarters of U.S. households use the Web regularly for activities ranging from banking to shopping to sharing the intimate details of life, including photos of children and social contacts. They also bring work home to do on home computers.

As Internet activity increased, malware — or “malicious software” — perpetrating online financial scams, identity theft, e- mail phishing, Trojan viruses and more multiplied. Current estimates put…

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