MARCH 2020 • TECH ADVISOR 57Norton Security’s interface is more or less the same
as it has been for a few years now. At the top of the
window is the current status of your PC. If it’s green
and says, ‘You Are Protected’ then you’re good to go.
One new addition is that it now lists how many of your
Norton licensed devices are in use – Premium gives you
the right to install the security software on 10 devices.
Below the status area are four primary categories:
Security, Online Safety, Backup, and Performance.
There’s also a fifth category called More Norton
with supplemental software. The status area above
changes as you switch between categories giving you
an overview of another aspect of your PC. When the
Performance section is highlighted, for example, it
shows a live count of overall CPU system usage and
Norton CPU usage.
Security (pictured opposite) is where you can run
security scans, update the software, see your device’s
history of recent security events, and an Advanced
option for adjusting your various protection options
such as the enhanced firewall, intrusion protection,
email protection, browser protection, and so on.
Overall, this section is straightforward and easy to
understand. You can run a standard quick scan, a full
system scan, a custom scan, or a custom task such as
cleaning out temporary browser files, optimizing your
hard disk (don’t do this to an SSD), and backing up files.
There’s also Norton’s Power Eraser, which is
supposed to delete particularly stubborn threats, and
Norton Insight, a feature that assesses the files on your
machine to determine which ones, if any, need to be
monitored more closely. You can also view a diagnostic