Symantec releases Norton Internet Security 2011 and Norton Antivirus 2011

Symantec Wednesday launched the latest versions of its flagship security products: Norton Antivirus 2011 and Norton Internet Security 2011. As it has been for the last two years, Symantec's focus remains on keeping the Norton software quick and lightweight, while harnessing the power of the crowd and the cloud.

For this version of the Norton software, Symantec has added 100 new content updates, which includes new versions of both the software's behavioral engine, and the file-based heuristic engine. The cumulative effect of the improvements were recently shown off by software benchmarking company Passmark; which ranked a beta version of Norton Internet Security 2011 the best performing security software package for Windows 7 Ultimate (64 bit.) The company timed booting, scanning, browsing, IE launching, and installation, measured memory usage at idle, footprint, registry keys added, and network throughput in a total of 30 different tests.

But performance is really only a small part of the value of any antivirus, the real value is in how well it protects users. Symantec and StrategyOne conducted a survey of more than 7,000 adults in 14 countries and found that 65% had been the victim of a cybercrime, and that only 9% feel that they're very safe online. So with this release, Symantec is not only rolling out more sophisticated paid software to make license owners feel more safe, but also more free tools and services so unprotected users have something to grab onto.

These include Norton Safe Web, Safe Web for Facebook, and Norton Power Eraser 1.0. The latter of these is actually one of the most interesting of Symantec's new products.

Norton Power Eraser detects and repairs new malware threats that are not typically detected by Norton product scanners, specifically fake AV "scareware," and zero day threats. It uses more aggressive heuristics to find fake AV, which could result in benign software being removed.

"Half of the people we sampled using Power Eraser had no security whatsoever," Norton spokesman said, "but 65% of those users who downloaded and used Power Eraser said it worked."

I asked Symantec about making some of its more groundbreaking tools available for free.

"We're finding that there are lots of users who don't use any antivirus at all, so common sense tells us that sooner or later, they're going to need help," a spokesperson told us. "When you're in that situation, I want to be able to offer you something. I'm engendering goodwill, and fostering trust for when users need us."

"It's about doing more." she continued. "I want to be present in places where we weren't in the past. We didn't have anything to help you in places like Facebook before."

Norton Safe Web for Facebook lets users scan their Facebook feeds for malicious URLs, and it's available as a free web-based scan, as well as integrated into the software package.

Norton Internet Security 2011 is available now for $69.99 for 1 year protection on up to 3 PCs; and Norton AntiVirus 2011 is available for $39.99 for 1 year protection on a single PC.