Antivirus protection is at the core of every security suite, whether aimed at consumers or small businesses. Naturally, this suite includes all the features found in Norton AntiVirus Plus, which is itself an Editors’ Choice. Please read that review for all the details; I’ll provide a summary here.
I closely follow five antivirus testing labs around the world that contribute to the greater good by testing popular antivirus apps and reporting their findings. Oh, they don’t do it just out of goodness; they get paid by the antivirus companies whose technology they evaluate. The number of labs testing a given antivirus gives a rough idea of its importance. Norton, like Avast, appears in the latest reports from all five labs. Yep, it’s important.
Norton earned perfect scores from AVLab Cybersecurity Foundation, AV-Test Institute, MRG-Effitas, and SE Labs. With AV-Comparatives, an antivirus that does well enough to pass gets Standard certification, while those that go beyond the minimum can receive Advanced or Advanced+ certification. In three recent tests by this lab, Norton earned one apiece of Standard, Advanced, and Advanced+ ratings.
With some labs providing named success levels and others reporting in numbers or percentages, comparison can be tough. I’ve devised an Excel spreadsheet to map all the results onto a 10-point scale and combine them into an aggregate score. That calculation yields 9.6 points for both Norton and Avast.
ESET doesn’t show up in current reports from SE Labs, but the other four assigned it the maximum possible score, yielding a perfect 10-point aggregate score. Also tested by four labs, Bitdefender and McAfee turned in an impressive 9.8-point score, while Microsoft lagged with 8.8. AVG and Malwarebytes also reached a 10-point aggregate, but their scores come from just two labs each.
Few security apps boast a five-lab sweep like Norton, but more than a third of those I track exhibit a different kind of sweep—no results at all. About another sixth show up in just one lab’s test results. With or without lab results, I can always rely on my hands-on testing. I put every antivirus through a series of tests that give me useful scores for comparison and let me experience the app doing its job.
My malware blocking test starts when I bring the antivirus’s attention to a collection of malware that I gathered and curated myself. For some, just opening the folder containing samples is enough to trigger a scan. Others scan when a file is launched or moved. And for others, Norton among them, every downloaded file gets vetted by real-time antivirus. For testing, I downloaded all my samples from cloud storage.
(Credit: Norton/PCMag)
Norton detected and eliminated two-thirds of the samples during download. That’s helpful, but others have detected more. McAfee+ and UltraAV, notably, wiped out every sample in this first phase, and Malwarebytes managed 99%. With most apps, the initial culling leaves behind anywhere from a few to a few dozen files. To complete my test, I launch those files and note how the antivirus reacts.
Overall, Norton detected 97% of the samples and scored 9.7 out of 10 possible points. Avast and AVG earned precisely the same score, a strong reminder that the three products use the same antivirus engine. Malwarebytes beats this trio by a hair, with 99% detection and 9.9 points. At the top, with a perfect 10, are McAfee and UltraAV.
Given that sourcing and analyzing a new set of malware takes weeks, I necessarily use the same samples for months at a time. To see how each antivirus fends off the latest malware, I start with a feed of malware-hosting URLs supplied by testing lab MRG-Effitas. For each sample URL, I record whether the security app blocks access to the dangerous URL, quarantines the malware payload, or sits idly without acting in your defense. I keep at it until I have around 100 data points.
(Credit: Norton/PCMag)
Along with UltraAV and Aura, Norton managed 99% protection, a feat beaten only by Avira Prime, Guardio, and Sophos Home Premium, each with a perfect 100% score.
Looking at other small business suites, most at least topped 90%. ESET, Avast, AVG, and Bitdefender reached 95%, 94%, 93%, and 92% respectively. With just 83% protection, Malwarebytes is an outlier.
The same browser security that flags malware-hosting pages also serves to identify phishing websites. A phishing site masquerades as a legitimate, secure site of some kind, anything from banking to dating. If you type your username and password into the fake site, you’ve handed over your account to the phishing fraudsters.
In a business setting, the consequences of phishing are amplified. It’s one thing if fraudsters gain control of your Club Penguin account, but quite another if the compromised account controls HR or payroll for your small business. And as loyal as your employees may be, they don’t necessarily have the skills to detect a phishing attack. Fortunately, most antivirus and security suite apps do their own scanning and warn you (and your employees) away from these frauds.
(Credit: Norton/PCMag)
To test this feature, I start by gathering hundreds of reported frauds from websites that collect them, making sure to include some that are too new to have been analyzed and blocklisted. I launch each simultaneously in four browsers, three relying on protection built into Chrome, Edge, and Firefox, and one defended by the antivirus under test. After discarding all but verified phishing attempts, I analyze the results.
All the small business suites I’ve tested did very well in this test, some of them very well. The lowest score was 96% for Malwarebytes, which is still way better than scores from the three browsers. Avast, Bitdefender, and Norton all detected 99% of the real-world phishing pages, while AVG and ESET attained a perfect 100%.
As an added shield against the depredations of ransomware attacks, Norton bans all unauthorized programs from making changes to protected files. Out of the box, the ransomware protection system monitors the Desktop, Documents, Music, Pictures, and Videos folders for all users. It specifically protects file types such as documents, audio, and images. Do review the list of protected file types, to make sure it covers all types important to you. For example, you might want to add protection for .TXT files. By default, it allows access for known and trusted programs. If you get a warning about an unknown program attempting access, you can choose to block that access.
(Credit: Norton/PCMag)
To test this feature, I had to turn off all other real-time antivirus components. Norton detected all but one of a dozen real-world ransomware samples the moment they tried to touch a protected program. However, all the samples managed to encrypt some files outside the protected folders, from dozens to thousands of them. Do remember that I couldn’t begin to perform this test without turning off layer after layer of standard protection.
