Norton 2012 Betas Earn High Marks from Antivirus Group

Public beta testing for the 2012 Norton security products began last Friday. In the few days since, German antivirus test lab AV-Test.org has worked up initial impressions for Norton AntiVirus 2012 beta and Norton Internet Security 2012 beta, and both products definitely made a good first impression.

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Norton detected 98.87 percent out of almost 150,000 very recent malware samples, beating the current industry average of 97.71 percent. In both on-demand and on-access tests, it detected 100 percent of widespread “WildList” malware. Since all current products detect 100 percent of those samples, this success isn’t surprising.

AV-Test also challenged Norton to detect, terminate, and clean up about two dozen active malware samples. It detected them all and successfully removed 95.7 percent of them. The average program in this test detects 95.2 percent, removes the active components for 85.7 percent, and fully removes just 47.6 percent. Norton also detected and removed 87.5 percent of active rootkit samples, compared to an average of 56 percent.

The lab didn’t report any measurable slowdown of system operations in daily use, and reported that after the initial full scan, subsequent scans cut 85 to 90 percent off the scan time. Norton also correctly refrained from identifying any of 250,000 valid files as malicious—zero false positives.

The final test challenged Norton to detect and prevent active attacks by malicious Web sites and malicious downloads. It correctly warned and blocked all but one sample, for a success rate of 96.8 percent. The average product detects 80 percent of these threats and successfully blocks 64 percent.

Overall, the Norton products put on a stellar performance, achieving above-average results in every test. AV-Test will replace Norton AntiVirus 2011 and Norton Internet Security 2011 in their ongoing tests once the 2012 editions are actually released. PCMag will put them through a thorough evaluation at that time as well.