JANUARY 2022 PCWorld 39PERFORMANCE
To combat the latest threats, Norton has some
new anti-malware features. Over the past year,
the company has improved its anti-malware
scripting interface (AMSI) to improve detection
and help restore compromised files; it
optimized detection for process hollowing,
where malware dumps the code for a
legitimate process in memory and inserts
malicious code; and it has malicious browser
extension removal that observes the behavior
of your browser’s various add-ons to make sure
they aren’t misbehaving.
In practical terms, we can see how well
Norton is doing with protection by turning to
third parties. In AV-Test’s round of testing from
September and October 2021 (fave.
co/3DXF8Ao), Norton 360 scored 100
percent in both months on the zero-day
malware attack test, as well as the widespread
and prevalent malware test.
Over at AV-Comparatives, Norton
blocked 100 percent of samples in the
real-world protection test (fave.
co/31ZUMOP) between July and October
2021, with 37 false positives. In the malware
protection test for September 2021 (fave.
co/3wUMGCa), Norton also scored 100
percent, with 14 false positives. All in all, the
protection results are excellent.
For our in-house performance tests, we
saw some noticeable changes with Norton
360 installed. The PCMark 10 Creative test
dropped 42 points after averaging the scores
of three different runs both before and after
Norton was installed. The large file transfer
test was about 90 seconds slower with
Norton installed; the large archive test was 14
minutes slower (one hour and four minutes
versus one hour and eighteen minutes), and
extracting all of that archived data took an
extra four minutes. The only test that didn’t
show any significant difference with Norton
installed was the Handbrake test.
That tells me you may see some
performance loss while using Norton on a
midrange or lower PC.BOTTOM LINE
Norton 360 Deluxe is a very good suite with a
good price. If you’re looking for excellent
antivirus protection that won’t get in your
way, and that offers a good number of
features, this is the suite to buy.Norton 360 DeluxePROS- Many extra features.
- Very good protection.
CONS - Performance impact was surprisingly greater this
time around.
BOTTOM LINE
There aren’t a lot of fundamental changes to Norton
360 Deluxe compared to previous iterations, but you
do get a good number of extra features such as Dark
Web Monitoring and VPN access. Performance
against security threats is excellent, though midrange
machines might see a small performance hit running
the security suite.
$9.99