I am a bit conflicted with the Norton 360 Platinum protection suite, while it has the familiar Norton Anti-virus interface buried deep into the product it often feels like the product won’t leave you alone.
I’ve used other anti-virus suites and Norton has to be the most chatty of them all, especially soon after you install it. Reminding you to use the included VPN (more on that later), the Dark Web Monitoring, Cloud Backup, Password Manager and various browser integrations.
Somewhere you can reduce the amount of prompts, popups and other items via some changes in settings, but the default configuration is just chatty. Lets start with the Device Security, where you can scan your hard drives, removable drives, force updates of virus definitions manually (this happens in the background automatically) and review security logs.
Internet Security which monitors your Internet activity for various threats. Backup, which can backup your PC and important data to the cloud (the version I have provides 100GB of storage) however you need to smartly configure what is backs up as if you have a large amount of picture or videos on your computer you will receive messages that your backup failed due to cloud storage constraints.
Granted you can only configure this if you have administrative rights on your PC, that level of access is also needed to make any real configuration changes with the Norton setup. As part of standard best security practices, you should use an account on your PC that has plain user rights and only use a full administrator account for configuring changes to your applications or PC.
Performance, again you need full administrative right to Optimize the disk, you can do a limited file cleanup which only cleans up your browser cache (note to Norton, Internet Explorer is history, need to update the verbiage) and Windows Temporary files that are under your user profile.
Startup manager requires Administrative privileges but will allow you to configure the startup behavior of your PC. Graphs will provide you a chart of activities Norton performed and when. Any of the actions that require Administrator privileges should really prompt you to enter elevated credentials instead of just saying Access Denied.
Dark web monitoring is part of Norton Life Lock service and can be configured to monitor dark web activity with any of your personal information, such as address and email addresses as well as other Bank Accounts, Credit Cards, Phone Numbers, Drivers License, Mothers maiden name and Gamer tag.
Now this is great service if you are comfortable with providing all this information in one place and with Norton (what if they get breached?). All of this opens a browser and is not integrated into the Norton Interface itself.
Secure VPN – most security suites offer VPN access which can help secure some of your information and web surfing activities. Most VPN connections actually slow your connection down from your PC or Mobile device as all you internet traffic through a setup of servers.
Norton’s implementation does not use Open VPN, but IPSEC instead – from a performance perspective this is good, but it practices seemed to make my connection a bit buggy. Also, it assumes you only want to use a VPN when connected to unknown or public networks, not your home Wi-Fi if it is password protected.
This behavior also occurs with the mobile device VPN in addition to cellular networks, again in practice the VPN seemed a bit flaky when I installed in on my iOS device. There are also reasons for masking your traffic and sites you visit when using your Internet Services Provider (ISP) or mobile phone carrier since some internet providers monitor your Internet traffic and sell or otherwise use this info and/or feed it to third parties.
Thus I prefer to keep my VPN all the time. If you plan to use their VPN, you can only specify a country, not a specific city. Their VPN servers are well known, and most content providers will be able to detect that you are using a VPN (in case you were going to try to spoof Netflix or another service but connecting to a different country).
Password Manager – useful for some, annoying for me. Parental Controls – useful for those with young offspring, again opens a browser to configure instead of doing it within the app. Pros: – Good performance, not a huge resource hog – Fairly high rated as it catches a majority of threats – Fairly configurable if you have Administrator rights, logging into an elevated account to do that is annoying.
– Cloud storage (100GB) with my subscription level (Platinum) – VPN included, albeit not the best in class – Software Firewall included and mostly configure itself Cons: – VPN automatic configuration seems a bit overbearing and the connection sometimes varies in speed and connectivity.
– The product out of the box is too chatty, need to change items (admin access required) to quiet it down. – Antitrack is not included in Deluxe. – VPN is only configurable by country, not a specific city within one, most services seem to be within the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud.
– Limited amount of VPN servers worldwide.