Norton Security 2015 Review

A good antivirus program is a critical part of any PC software suite, and one of the best options is Norton Security 2015, which includes a sleek, well-organized interface, a top-notch antivirus engine and many other security and privacy features. For 2015, Norton has radically simplified its product line. It once sold three different tiers of Windows products at different prices, ranging from basic protection to an advanced suite, but Norton now has just one product: Norton Security. With a list price of $80 per year (significant discounts are available online), it protects five devices running Windows, OS X, iOS or Android. For an extra $10, Norton Security with Backup adds 25GB of cloud storage and five more device licenses. Setup and interface To install Norton Security 2015, I went to the company's website, plugged in an activation code and started the download. The entire process required a computer restart, but took just a bit longer than 10 minutes. Norton Security's interface consists of a white rectangle with green accents, which change to yellow if it needs an update, and to red if it detects a serious threat. The protection status is also spelled out in words. MORE: Best Mac Antivirus Software Four rectangular icons on the main interface demarcate Norton Security's feature groups: Security, Identity, Performance and More. Clicking any icon slides the entire icon row aside so that new buttons, keyed to particular icons, appear. It's a sleek, well-animated look befitting Norton's concise and simple interface design. LiveUpdate, keyed to the Security icon, manages Norton Security 2015's updates. The History button, also keyed to Security, shows a record of the computer's security-related activities -- not only results of malware scans, but also user logins and Wi-Fi connections. An Advanced button reveals the status of antivirus, firewall and identity protections. Overall, the clean, easy-to-use interface conveys appropriate seriousness without feeling heavy or overbearing, and explains Norton Security 2015's features in clear language. Protection Features Like most modern antivirus programs, Norton Security 2015 identifies malware by comparing suspicious files to a cloud-based database of known malware definitions, which no longer need to be downloaded. Norton Security also analyzes suspicious behavior, identifying malware threats early. By default, Norton Security 2015 performs malware scans weekly, offering regular protection without making users wade through settings. The interface for scheduling scans is a bit buried, but can be found in both the Security section and the Settings menu at the top right of the main interface. Additional Tools The Security section holds four subsections: Run Scans, LiveUpdate, History and Advanced. Run Scans, naturally, launches on-demand malware scans. It can also scan your Facebook Wall for malicious links, or run a "Power Eraser" that searches your hard drive for the adware or browser hijackers typical antivirus scans ignore. (Norton warns that Power Eraser may accidentally flag and delete legitimate programs.) Another scan, Norton Insight, identifies "trusted" files that won't be examined during Quick Scans, while Diagnostic Report looks for items that might improve your PC's performance — it flagged several startup items on my PC that could be removed. The Identity section contains four tools: Identity Safe, ID Settings, Statistics and Password Generator. The first tool stores sensitive information, such as passwords and financial information, in encrypted cloud storage. Data can be entered by hand or imported from password managers. If you install the Norton Toolbar browser plugin for Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome or Microsoft Internet Explorer, the data will autocomplete in Web page form fields. ID Settings manages Norton Security 2015's background protections, such as anti-phishing protection and website safety ratings, both of which require Norton Toolbar. Statistics shows how frequently you've used Norton Security 2015's various features, while Password Generator launches a Web page to create random, strong passwords. Back on the Norton Security 2015 main interface, the Performance icon leads to four more tools. Optimize Disk cleans up your hard drive. File Cleanup finds files that can be deleted. Startup Manager adds and removes programs from the Startup folder to improve boot times. Graphs displays a timeline of activities Norton Security 2015 has performed, similar to the History section but more visually oriented. Most of the Performance tools duplicate Windows system tools or free optimizers such as CCleaner, but Norton puts them in one place and makes them easier to use. The More Norton section of the main interface contains Add Devices, Manage, Identity Safe, Family and Backup. The first two handle all devices protected by your Norton Security software, such as Macs, other PCs or iOS and Android devices. Identity Safe launches the feature of the same name from the Identity section, while Backup simply urges you to spend the extra $10 for Norton Security with Backup. Parental Controls Separate Norton Family, the parental-control feature, requires installation of a browser extension upon each device children use. Norton Family can be accessed from a Web browser or a mobile phone, reveals children's browsing histories, search histories and Facebook usage, and can also place time limits on Internet use. For an extra $50 per year, Norton Family Premier incorporates features found in parental-control mobile apps, such as displaying children's text messages and, for kids with Android devices, location tracking and lists of installed apps. It also lists children's YouTube and Hulu views on PCs. Security Performance The most important part of any antivirus program is malware detection. To assess Norton Security 2015's capabilities, we turned to AV-TEST, a German lab that regularly assesses antivirus software. In August 2014, AV-TEST found that Norton detected 100 percent of the well-known malware samples thrown at it, comfortably above the industry average of 98 percent. Against newly discovered "zero-day" malware, Norton also scored 100 percent, better than the industry average of 96 percent.

Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2015 Review: Best All-Around Security

The best antivirus programs don't simply detect malware. For what's often an additional cost, they come with other features designed to protect users' online privacy and security. Enter Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2015 ($60 for three PCs, $40 for one PC, with discounts available online), an entry-level antivirus program that includes extras often found in pricier packages: profiles for performance optimization, a secure browser that makes online shopping safer and even a "rescue disk" mode to clean up hard-to-reach malware. The impressive range of features, combined with a slick, user-friendly interface and top-notch malware protection, makes Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2015 our top pick for entry-level antivirus software in 2015. What We Tested We've evaluated the starting-tier antivirus products from AVG, Bitdefender, Kaspersky Lab, Trend Micro and Webroot. Each was installed (one at a time) on an Acer Aspire E1 laptop with a Core i3 processor and 4 GB of RAM, running 64-bit Windows 8. Setup and Interface From Bitdefender's website, I downloaded the trial version of Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2015 onto the Acer Aspire E1 and clicked through the installation wizard. The process took about 10 minutes over our office Wi-Fi network — on the long side, because Bitdefender scans for malware before installation. After that, I entered my product key and I was in. MORE: Best Antivirus Software Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2015 is compatible with Windows Vista, 7, 8, 8.1 and even XP, despite Microsoft's termination of support for the latter. (The company also makes Mac and Android antivirus software.) The main interface of Bitdefender's Windows products received a makeover for 2015. Instead of the contoured, shaded boxes of earlier editions, the new versions have a "flat," no-nonsense look mirroring the style of Windows 10, Android Lollipop or Apple’s iOS 8 and OS X 10.10 Yosemite. The top of the main Bitdefender interface displays your computer's protection status in green (meaning all clear), yellow (slight concern) or red (red flag). The new gunmetal-gray background, with white text and blue accents, makes the alerts pop. Beneath the protection status are four square icons: Protection, Privacy, Tools and a fourth quartered into smaller icons: Scan, Update, Safepay and Optimize. (The latter two options are also in the Privacy and Tools sections, respectively, but I like that they're located on the main menu as well.) Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2015 has a small circular widget that displays independently in the lower corner of the computer screen. Except for stylistic "flattening," the widget's design is mostly unchanged from previous years; it displays the computer's current status in green, yellow or red. Clicking on the widget launches the main interface. Some tools in Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2015, such as the Wallet, are deactivated by default, and can't be edited or used until you've clicked a switch in the upper right-hand corner of the interface. This switch is small, not labeled and easy to miss; users who don't see it may think Bitdefender Antivirus 2015 isn't working correctly. We wish the program had more clearly specified when tools were deactivated. Overall, Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2015’s interface takes itself quite seriously, but the white and colored text on the gunmetal-gray interface keep it from being overbearing. Except for the activation switches, the tools are well-organized and well-explained. Protection Features Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2015's antivirus engine is shared among all Bitdefender's Windows antivirus products. Clicking the small Scan icon on the main interface, or the same icon under the Protection section, starts a quick scan. Click the Protection icon, and you'll come to a page featuring the tools Antivirus, Web Protection and Vulnerability. Under Antivirus Scan, you can launch a Quick Scan or a System Scan (a full scan of your computer), as well as schedule regular scans. Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2015 has an on-access scanning feature and automatically scans stored files as you access or modify them. An email scanner inspects incoming and outgoing messages for infected attachments. Web Protection is an always-on feature that scans websites you visit in all browsers, and sniffs out fraud and phishing attempts. Additional Tools Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2015 has a Rescue Mode tool, which runs from a Linux partition it creates on the hard drive. If your computer is seriously compromised, reboot in Rescue Mode, then launch Antivirus Plus 2015 from Linux instead of Windows and scan the partition where Windows is installed. Many antivirus makers offer similar "rescue disks," but the software must be downloaded separately to a "clean" computer, then burned onto a CD or installed onto a USB drive — an arduous process for someone who needs to quickly fix a severely infected machine. Bitdefender cuts out the extra steps by creating the Rescue Mode partition when you first install Antivirus Plus 2015. Other tools include Vulnerability, which checks to see whether Windows security patches and other software updates are necessary, plus three privacy-oriented tools: Data Protection, Wallet and Safepay. Data Protection scans Web and email traffic for names, credit-card numbers, Social Security numbers or other sensitive data, and includes a file shredder to permanently erase files. (Normal "empty trash" merely makes a file available for overwriting.) Wallet is a password manager, but also handles credit-card numbers and other payment info. Sensitive data is safely stored and autocompletes in your browser. Safepay is a stand-alone browser, based on Google's open-source Chromium browser, which makes online purchases more secure by isolating them from other Web traffic. It comes with a virtual, on-screen keyboard to dodge keylogging malware. Both are great ideas, but we'd like to see Safepay updated: It’s based on Chromium 25, which was released at the end of 2012 and has several known vulnerabilities. The Tools section adds three more tools: Tuneup, Profiles and Safego. The first optimizes performance by deleting extra files, defragmenting storage drives and speeding up Windows startup. (Similar system tools are built into Windows, but Bitdefender puts them in one handy spot.) Safego scans your Facebook wall for malicious links and helps configure Facebook privacy settings. Profiles lets users designate settings "profiles" based on different activities. Activate your Work Profile, and Bitdefender optimizes your PC's performance to run on minimal battery life. In Movie Profile and Game Profile, Bitdefender Antivirus 2015 boosts visual effects and pauses scheduled scans that might interrupt entertainment. In most of these sections, you'll see options grayed out, including Firewall, Parental Control and Anti-Theft. All are available only in Bitdefender's higher-tier products, Bitdefender Internet Security 2015 ($79.95 list) and Bitdefender Total Security 2015 ($89.95 list). MORE: Bitdefender Total Security Review Security Performance The essential part of an antivirus program is its ability to detect viruses and other malware. To assess Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2015, we turned to independent German institute AV-TEST, which routinely tests most antivirus software. Because every antivirus-software maker uses the same malware-detection engine for its entire line of Windows software, AV-TEST generally tests only the intermediate-tier product from each company. The results should apply to the "starter" and "premium" products as well. In an October 2014 examination, AV-TEST found that the Bitdefender Internet Security 2015 running on Windows 8.1 achieved perfect 100-percent scores in both detection of widespread malware and in detection of newly discovered zero-day malware. That's above the industry averages of 99 percent and 96 percent, respectively. AVG Internet Security 2014 & 2015 Kaspersky Internet Security 2015 Bitdefender Internet Security 2015 TrendMicro Maximum Security 2015 WebRoot SecureAnywhere Complete 8.0 Widespread malware 98% 100% 100% 100% 99% 0-day malware 97% 100% 100% 99% 82%