Norton Internet Security 2009 beta

Home network help

Another notable feature new to NIS 2009 is the Home Network view, which gives users a network device map from which those devices can also be managed. Of particular note is a view of security danger zones, including wireless networks - setups that are notorious for being insecure both in home and business settings.

A remote-monitoring feature allows the user to keep tabs on whether other Norton-protected computers on the network are at risk, while a network map presents a visual picture of a network and all connected devices - a feature that allows users to detect when an unidentified and potentially unauthorised device has connected to the network.

The final menu item for Norton's Home Network view is Trust Controls, a feature that allows users to view or change default trust settings for the entire network or for individual network-connected devices.

Identity Safe

Also new in NIS 2009 is Identity Safe, technology that allows for storage of personal information that is typically entered in buying, banking, browsing and online gaming. Identity Safe allows users to enter their personal information for a given site once; after that, they can kick back and let the feature fill in the necessary log-in information the next time they visit a particular site.

True, many Web browsers have similar functionality. Symantec doesn't mince words: the Identity Safe function offers to import your personal identity information from IE (but not from Firefox) and says that NIS 2009 will do a better job at keeping it safe, period. NIS 2009 works with Firefox, of course, but a Symantec representative says that the new ability of Identity Safe to import information is only for IE.

Phishing phun

Norton's updated toolbar grades sites for phishing attempts with a colour-coded check in the upper lefthand corner of the toolbar. We filtered through a Yahoo Mail spam folder to get a good, broad selection of unsavoury tidbits and decided to visit a "US based online p/h/a/r/m store" where we expected to be able to "buy any m.e.d.i.c.a.t.i.o.ns you need!"

After clicking on the link provided, Norton didn't report any phishing attempts. Naturally, we didn't follow through with inputting an email address and a query.

Instead, we turned to the Norton Public Beta Forum, where posters were reporting that NIS 2009 AntiPhishing is providing multiple false positives. More critically, NIS 2009 AntiPhishing is also missing phishing identifications that would seem to be easy catches, including URLs that are publicly identified as phishing sites according to PhishTank, a free site run by DNS service provider OpenDNS.

Symantec is obviously still fine-tuning the product and promises that whatever's causing the false positives and missed identifications will be ironed out in the final cut. In the meantime, Symantec asks that users send along the URLs for false positives or for phishing sites that slip under the radar.

Beyond phishing, if beta users suspect they've been infected with something seriously fishy-looking that NIS 2009 didn't detect, Symantec suggests running LiveUpdate to install the latest virus definitions and running a full system scan to remove detected malicious files. Symantec has further instructions here for troubleshooting suspected malware infections with the NIS 2009 beta.