Overall, Norton 360 is my favorite antivirus in 2021 — it’s got a powerful anti-malware engine, a wide range of internet security tools, an intuitive online dashboard, and good customer support, all for a better price than most competitors. Norton’s anti-malware engine uses machine learning, advanced heuristics, and a consistently updated malware dire Show More...
Overall, Norton 360 is my favorite antivirus in 2021 — it’s got a powerful anti-malware engine, a wide range of internet security tools, an intuitive onboard, and good customer support, all for a better price than most competitors. Norton’s anti-malware engine uses machine learning, advanced heuristics, and a consistently updated malware directory to identify malware — from viruses and trojans to advanced malware like ransomware and cryptojackers. During my testing, Norton’s full scan and real-time protection were both able to detect every single malware file I tried to download, with minimal system slowdown and no false positives. Norton also has: • A firewall. • Anti-shing protection. • Parental controls. • Secure VPN (virtual private network). • Cloud backup. • Privacy protection. • Webcam protection (Windows only). • Identity theft protection (US only). • And a lot more… Norton’s internet security protections are the best on the market — the anti-shing protection caught more fraudulent and fake sites than Chrome or Firefox, the dark web monitoring uses human agents to infiltrate dark web forums and give live assistance regarding data breaches, and its customizable parental controls are better than most standalone parental control apps. But Norton isn’t perfect. Norton’s desktop app isn’t the most intuitive software to use, and mobile users need to download 4 separate apps to get full security on their devices. And while Norton’s VPN offers encrypted web access to lots of servers worldwide, it failed to unblock Netflix’s geo-restricted content during my tests. The VPN is also a bit slower than many competitors, and it doesn’t allow torrenting. While I do have some complaints, I still think Norton 360 provides an exnt value. I’m impressed by how many well-built features Norton includes — and for such a good price. Most competitors offer a few good extras along with their anti-malware scanner, but almost all of Norton’s security tools would be worth buying on their own. Plus, Norton comes with a generous 60-day money-back guarantee — plenty of time to test it and see if it’s right for you. Norton 360 Security Features Norton has more features than most competing antivirus software. These are my favorite ones: Norton uses a massive malware directory as well as heuristic analysis and machine learning to detect malware. It offers a variety of virus scanning options plus real-time protection to keep malware from Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS devices. For my testing, I downloaded a database of nearly 1,000 malware files, including viruses, exploits, worms, trojans, backdoors, keyloggers, rootkits, zero-day attacks, ransomware, spyware, cryptojackers, and PUPs (potentially unwanted programs). Norton caught 100% of the malware files on my disk with a full system scan — there are only a handful of competitors that can boast a similar malware detection rate (like Bitdefender and Avira). After testing Norton’s full scan, I turned on the real-time protection and tried to download the same 997-file malware database in the form of plain files, zipped files, and even encrypted files. Norton blocked all of the plain files before my computer could even begin downloading them, and it blocked all of my zipped and encrypted malware files the moment I attempted to unzip and decrypt them. Norton’s full disk scan took about 40 minutes on my PC, which is pretty fast — however, Norton also offers a variety of other scan options, such as: • Quick scan — Scans areas where malware is most commonly found, such as temporary files, running processes, and system files. • Custom scan — Scans specified folders and disk locations. • Norton insight — Quickly scans for specific files that may need to be scanned. Norton makes it really easy to schedule all of its virus scans — I scheduled Norton to run a full scan from 3-5am every morning, but you can also schedule weekly or monthly scans. One thing I really like about Norton is that it’s designed to automatically detect when your apps are in full screen mode — Norton won’t give you any notifications or initiate any scans (including scheduled scans) while you’re playing games, watching movies, or using any other full screen app. Gamers will appreciate that Norton automatically suspends notifications and scans in full screen mode (Norton ranks among the best antiviruses for gaming). Overall, Norton’s malware scanner is exnt — the full system scan detected all of my test malware without slowing down my PC, and the real-time protection blocked all of the malware samples I tried downloading. I also like that Norton offers several scanning options, including a quick and custom scan, and I found it very easy to schedule scans. Smart Firewall Norton includes a “Smart Firewall” that offers significant improvements over built-in firewalls from Windows and macOS. In my exploit testing, Norton detected every single network intrusion, including a few instances that my Windows firewall failed to block. Norton’s firewall provides a ton of customization options for advanced users. When you’re on a public Wi-Fi network, Norton’s firewall blocks many of the services provided by Windows, such as Network Discovery, File and Printer Sharing, and Remote Desktop Connection. However, if you want to allow any of these options, you can see a full list of Windows services in the Permissions window. Additionally, Norton provides a list of 136 uncommon protocols — these protocols can be used by malware to communicate between devices on a network. Norton’s firewall automatically monitors all of these protocols for suspicious activity, and notifies users if they should disable any of these protocols due to a network-based malware threat. Overall, I really like Norton’s Smart Firewall — it detected all of the network intrusions during my tests, and it offers an impressive range of customization options for advanced users. Safe Web & Safe Search Norton offers a Safe Web browser extension that warns users of potentially dangerous websites as well as a Safe Search tool for secure browsing. Norton’s Safe Web browser extension (available for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge) provides protection against shing sites, as well as community reviews for suspicious web pages, and an “Isolation Mode” for oning. And Norton’s Safe Search is a search engine that lets users know whether a website is safe or not. The Safe Web browser extension provides really good anti-shing protection — it detected almost all of the shing sites in my testing, including sites that Chrome and top competitors like McAfee failed to detect. Safe Web also has an Isolation Mode for protecting users’ financial information. When users navigate to a financial site, Safe Web offers to put your browser in Isolation Mode — this blocks all browser-based intrusions and makes your browser window “read-only”, so no harmful web scripts or malware can make changes or steal information from your screen. For my testing, I navigated to my PayPal account, and Safe Web offered to put my browser into Isolation Mode. This completely cut my browser off from the rest of my system — I couldn’t copy text from my browser, screen capture, or even paste info into my browser. Hackers frequently steal user information by remotely screen recording financial information — Safe Web’s Isolation Mode makes it impossible for hackers to steal the information on your screen. Norton’s Safe Search tool is a secure search engine that offers color-coded assessments of search results — green is safe, orange is potentially unsafe, and red is dangerous. Unfortunately, Safe Search isn’t very good. During my tests, it falsely labeled numerous pirate websites as safe, and it offered grey “untested” notifications for most websites that are actually safe. Overall, I wasn’t too impressed with Norton’s Safe Search — it isn’t very accurate, labeling unsafe sites as safe and vice versa. However, Norton’s Safe Web browser extension provides exnt anti-shing protection and a secure sandboxed browser for financial transactions. Dark Web Monitoring (Select Countries Only) Norton’s dark web monitoring feature scans dark web forums, credit reports, and breach databases to notify users when their information has been leaked. As of right now, dark web monitoring is only available to US, UK, Germany, Australia, and New Zealand users. US users can also take advantage of LifeLock’s powerful identity protections — but I’ll get to that later. Norton’s dark web monitoring scans for a really impressive array of personally identifying information (PII), such as: • Bank account . • Credit cards. • Addresses. • Driver’s license information. • Insurance . • And lots more… Norton improves on most data breach monitors by using live human agents who are paid to infiltrate dark web forums — Norton’s dark web assistants can find data that most companies can’t, and they can give you advice and feedback in the event that your information is found on the dark web. This “real person” approach is much more effective than database-based breach monitors from competitors like Kaspersky. Furthermore, dark web monitoring is always active once you enter your information — the moment any of your data is discovered floating around the internet, Norton’s dark web monitoring team will give you a notification and instructions on how you can make the necessary changes to protect your identity and accounts. Norton’s dark web monitoring is really good, and it gets even better for US users that can access Norton’s LifeLock identity protection services. Identity Theft Protections (US Only) Norton’s LifeLock identity protections include a huge amount of features, such as: • Credit report monitoring. • Live identity recovery assistance. • Legal assistance. • Credit freezing. • Home title, court record, 401k, social security, and ID monitoring. I’m very impressed by LifeLock’s identity theft protection services. With live credit report monitoring, you receive notifications about any loans, purchases, investments, rental applications, or credit card applications that include any of your personal identifying information. LifeLock compiles data from TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax, which are the three credit reporting services in the US — if anybody is trying to use your information, LifeLock will be notified. Furthermore, LifeLock offers up to $1M in insurance payouts and legal assistance in the event of serious identity theft. I don’t have anywhere close to a million dollars, so I was happy to sign up for Norton’s LifeLock Select plan, which offers a substantial $25,000 payout for identity theft related damages, up to $1M in legal aid for identity theft victims, and access to Equifax’s credit monitoring network and LifeLock’s in-person identity recovery services. The only thing I don’t like about LifeLock’s protections is that they’re only available to US users. Competitors like TotalAV and BullGuard provide credit monitoring for users in the US, Canada, and Europe, and for less than LifeLock — but their protections aren’t nearly as comprehensive as LifeLock’s. If you’re looking to protect your finances, identity, investments, and personally identifying information, Norton’s LifeLock plans are the very best choice on the market (but again, only for US users). Secure VPN (Virtual Private Network) A VPN provides encrypted web access to a wide variety of servers around the world — helping to increase web privacy and protect browser activity from hackers, ISPs, and even the government. And Norton’s VPN offers unlimited access to an impressive amount of servers around the world… but it’s got a few downsides. Norton’s Secure VPN lets you connect to 79 locations in 30 countries. Norton has servers in Australia, South Africa, Japan, Singapore, and even India and Ukraine. This is a much better geograc range of servers than almost any other competing internet security suite (for example, McAfee Total Protection only connects to 23 countries). Norton’s VPN also provides a lot of good security features. • Strong encryption (256-bit AES). • No-logs policy. • Kill switch. • Ad tracker blocking. • Unlimited browsing data (even on the cheapest plan). In terms of connection speeds, while Norton’s VPN isn’t bad, it’s certainly not the best. VPNs work by sending your internet connection to another server (sometimes around the world) and encrypting all of your data — this process is always going to cause some slowdown, no matter which VPN you use. But because all VPNs handle these tasks differently, all VPNs have different speeds. In my tests, Norton’s VPN wasn’t nearly as fast as some antivirus competitors like Bitdefender, but it wasn’t the slowest either. This is my internet connection from my local network, without a VPN: As you can see, my download speed was cut pretty significantly, while my “Ping” went up by a lot. Ping going up this much isn’t a huge problem unless you’re gaming or streaming torrents — with Norton’s VPN on, I was still able to stream HD video and browse the web without any noticeable slowdown. But my connection did get a little bit worse when I connected to a server in the Netherlands from my home in the US: Ping and download speed remained about the same, but my upload speed was cut in half when connecting to this Dutch server. Unfortunately, when I attempted to access geo-restricted content on Netflix, I found that Norton’s VPN was unable to get past Netflix’s anti-VPN sensors. This is not the best, especially when standalone competitors like NordVPN can easily bypass Netflix’s geo-blocking. Also, another piece of bad news for file sharing fans is that Norton doesn’t allow torrenting with its VPN — Norton’s VPN disconnected the moment I opened my torrent client. Norton’s Secure VPN is a bit slower than competitors, it doesn’t allow torrenting, and it can’t unblock geo-restricted content like standalone VPNs (like NordVPN) can. On the other hand, Norton still ranks as one of the best antiviruses with a VPN because it provides encrypted web access across a variety of servers around the globe that most competitors don’t provide access to — including Asian, Eastern European, and even Australian and South African servers — along with the inclusion of a strict no-logs policy, an easy-to-use interface, a kill switch, and unlimited browsing data (included in even the cheapest Norton 360 package). Cloud Backup Norton’s Cloud Backup is pretty good — but it’s limited to PC users. Norton’s backup tool is basically identical to well-known cloud storage tools like Dropbox, OneDrive, and iCloud. It offers the following options: • Schedule backups. • Back up specific files. • Remove or save backed up files on your local disk. • Back up to the cloud or a local disk. Cloud Backup works pretty well — it automatically selected 50 GB of my important files, most of which were media files like .mov, .jpeg, .doc, and .wav. Advanced users can easily go into the “What” section of the backup settings and manually select which folders to back up. Norton’s backup isn’t going to win any awards for innovation, but if you’re not already using a cloud storage app to protect your data, it’s a perfectly functional solution for protecting user data in the cloud. Depending on which Norton plan you subscribe to, you can get 10-500 GB of storage using Norton’s Cloud Backup feature. Password Manager Norton’s built-in password manager is surprisingly good — a lot of antiviruses include password managers that only provide basic password storage for a single device, without any of the additional features that make Norton’s password manager special. It may not be as comprehensive as standalone apps like 1Password or Dashlane, but it’s simple, secure, and includes a few useful extra features. Here’s what’s included in Norton’s password manager: • Secure 256-bit AES encryption. • Unlimited password storage. • Synchronization across PCs, Macs, Androids, and iOS devices. • Browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari. • Auto-save and auto-fill. • Password generator. • Password vault auditing. After setting up my master password, Norton gave me the option to import my password vaults from Chrome, Firefox, Dashlane, LastPass, or 1Password. After importing my passwords from LastPass, I navigated to my PayPal account — Norton automatically offered me a small icon in the login fields and filled my address and password with a single click. Norton surpasses other antivirus companies by also including vault auditing tools in its password manager. Norton’s vault auditing is automatically updated, providing a helpful chart that shows which passwords are insecure, too simple, repeated, or too old. The vault auditing tool has an “Autochange” feature which can automatically generate new passwords for some websites. However, Norton’s Autochange is only compatible with a handful of popular sites. Dashlane’s auto-change feature is much better — it works for a few hundred more sites than Norton’s does. Norton’s password manager includes a mobile login option, which allows users to log into their vault using their mobile device instead of their master password. This feature is pretty good, but third-party password managers like RoboForm are also compatible with 2FA apps like Authy, mobile 2FA tokens like YubiKey, and a wide range of biometric scanners — Norton offers fingerprint login for Android users, but biometric login isn’t included on the ipassword manager app. Norton’s password manager isn’t perfect, though. The first problem I ran into is the fact that Norton doesn’t include account recovery or emergency access — if you forget your master password, there’s simply no way to log into your password vault. The only option Norton gives you is to destroy your vault and make a new one. Norton does let users create a password hint for their master password, but it’s hard to make a good hint for a string of random , letters, and symbols — which is what any good master password should include. Some users may appreciate this lack of account recovery options — it makes it impossible for con artists to gain access to your vault — but I think most users would rather have account recovery or emergency options like LastPass provides. Norton’s password manager isn’t as robust as some standalone competitors, but it provides multi-device sync, a secure password generator, auto-saving for new passwords, auto-filling for saved passwords, mobile login, and vault health auditing
Signup today to claim your Discount. Get Started before it's too late!
