By Khaw Chia Hooi

Kuala Lumpur, 15 October, 2009: According to a report on Slashdot, cyber crime profits have surpassed the drug trade. Cyber crime and other technology-related crimes have reached USD105 billion per year. Most of these scams are attributed to poor PC security and security breaches at financial services companies.

In 2008, Symantec blocked an average of more than 245 million attempted malicious code attacks across the globe each month. Among the frauds are phony emails, fake websites and online ads that trick Internet users into divulging personal data like social security and credit card numbers. Cyber criminals then sell the information to the highest bidder on the online black market.

Norton Internet Security 2010 and Norton AntiVirus 2010 introduces a new model of security, codenamed Quorum, to detect new malware and advance beyond traditional signature and behavior-based detection. 

Today, cyber criminals are furiously writing and then rewriting new and unique pieces of malware, hoping to stay under the radar of threat signatures for as long as possible. With Quorum, the very uniqueness of a file and its attributes is what helps us identify it as new malware. Quorum tracks files and applications and dozens of their attributes such as their age, download source, digital signature and prevalence. These attributes are then combined using complex algorithms to determine a reputation. As a file is distributed across the Internet and these attributes change, Quorum updates the reputation of the file.

The Norton 2010 products have maintained commendable performance, in spite of adding significant new protection technology to the release. Independent 3rd party test lab, PassMark Software was commissioned to benchmark Symantec and top security software competitors’ performance impact on key metrics. Highlights from this report include:

1. Fast install — Norton Internet Security 2010 installs in about a minute
2. Least working memory usage — Norton Internet Security 2010 uses just over 10MB
3. Fastest scan — Norton Internet Security 2010 scans in only 61 seconds on a Hard Disk Drive and in only 31 seconds on an Solid State Drive.

Norton Internet Security 2010 and Norton AntiVirus 2010 are available now for purchase through retailers and the Symantec online store at http://my.symantecstore.com as well as various retail locations and online. The official distributor for Symantec in Malaysia is ECS Astar Sdn Bhd.

The suggested retail price for Norton Internet Security 2010 is RM 179 for a three PC license and RM 109 for a single PC license; and for Norton AntiVirus 2010 is RM 139 for a three PC license and RM 79 for a single PC license. The price includes one-year service subscription to use the product and receive Symantec’s protection updates. All Norton Internet Security and Norton AntiVirus users with a valid product subscription are eligible to receive the latest product updates via the subscription service model. For more information, visit the Norton Update center at http://updatecenter.norton.com.