Norton antivirus beta defies cyber threats

NORTON’S Anti Virus version 2010, the new antivirus software released in March 2009 Symantec Corp., aims to identify in advance the viruses and malwares that might affect computers with online-application access.

The new detection method called reputation-based (quorum) reveals malicious activity or programs before it can be clicked or downloaded by a user based on the number of users, publisher and origin.

“This detection explains where the threat came from and what it may cause to applications installed in a user’s system. It provides ‘insights before install,’” explained David Hall, security expert and regional consumer product marketing manager of Symantec in Asia-Pacific told reporters during a live teleconference.

Although other detection methods in the form of signature, uncovering threats and comparing it to archived virus, and heuristic, concealing malicious activity through file analysis and file emulation, are still helpful, these two can no longer recognize recently released malware samples.

The executive shared that failure to identify such malware and threats could lead the threat to their proliferation in a system and even hide underneath an operating system, thus, even when safe boot is carried out, the condition of the system remains the same.

With an average of 200 million malware spread on the Web every month, according to Symantec, protection of users extending to that of other computer users are always at risk.

To prove the effectivity and efficiency of Norton Beta, AV-test.org conducted an observation of the product on July 6 using operating platforms of Windows XP and Vista.

It noted, “We have tested the dynamic [behavior-based] detection with a few recently released malware samples which are not yet detected by heuristics, signatures or the ‘in the cloud’ features and found that about 80 percent of them are properly identified and remove virus from computer.”