As far as I'm concerned, two "must have" items for surfing the Internet are virus protection and a personal firewall. In the September, 2001 issue of Sounding Line, I reviewed several free firewall programs. This month, let's take a look at Symantec's Internet Security Professional program, a helpful tool from an established vendor. The program normally retails for $69.95, but I've seen prices as low as $22.95 listed on the Internet (e.g., see www.thesoftwaremall.com). The software includes five primary components: Norton AntiVirus, Personal Firewall, Ad Blocking, Privacy Control, and Productivity Control.
For a technology company, Symantec has been around for a relatively long time. Founded in 1982, they acquired Norton in 1990. They have an extensive worldwide operation specializing in security solutions for both companies and individual users. Even if you don't purchase any of their products, Symantec's Web site (www.symantec.com) offers a wealth of information about computer viruses, worms, other security threats, and the weapons to fight them.
Security Assistant
Access this from the main screen — a button labeled "Assistant" is at the top of the window. While each of the features of the program can be accessed and set from the main menu, I'd recommend using the Security Assistant to do your initial set-up. It gives you information about each feature and suggestions for how to customize it to meet your needs.
AntiVirus
I've used Norton AntiVirus for Macintosh for many years, and at various times I've also used the PC version of the program. The current version is greatly improved. Once installed, it protects your computer and e-mail from viruses and worms. Since new threats are being created all the time (such pranksters have way too much time on their hands), it is important to keep your virus definitions up to date, and Symantec makes that easy with its Live Update feature. While the scanning of incoming and outgoing e-mails and the Live Update feature previously seemed like nuisances because of the lengthy running time, this current version (2002) does not appear to negatively impact my workflow and productivity.
If you receive a known virus in an e-mail, Norton AntiVirus automatically protects your computer by blocking it. However, if the file is suspicious, but not on the known virus list, AntiVirus lets you know and can either zap the e-mail immediately or quarantine the file so you can safely check it and decide whether to delete it or not.
Symantec recommends that you scan your computer for viruses at least once a week, a good idea if you swap disks with others or download files from the Internet.
Personal Firewall
A substantial level of customization is available in the firewall portion of the program. You can accept the default settings or tweak things yourself. For example, under Personal Firewall Settings, there is a slider to set a minimal, medium, or high security level. Within the custom settings in that section is the opportunity to individually set firewall, Java applet, and ActiveX control security.
Under Internet Access Control, using the "Configure" button, you can scan your computer for Internet-enabled programs and selectively block or allow their access to the Internet. The scan found 90 Internet-enabled programs on my computer (some appeared to be duplicates). The list included the usual suspects: browsers and e-mail programs, TCP/IP, product updaters, Quicken, Turbo Tax, Symantec programs (of course), etc. And, I'm not sure I even want to know what "Microsoft Out of the Box Experience" is! The "Configure" button also has choices for system-wide settings (I'd advise leaving the defaults) and Trojan Horse settings (already set up to block 64 known Trojan Horse programs). I assume that the Trojan Horse settings are updated when you run Live Update to check for new virus definitions.
Internet Zone Control allows you to add trusted and restricted sites. A wizard can automatically add computers in your workgroup to the trusted sites list. Intrusion Detection blocks common hacker attacks on your system. It is configurable to exclude trusted signatures and IP addresses.
Privacy Control
Here is an interesting utility. You can add individual pieces of confidential information, and you'll be alerted if you try sending that information to an non-secure site. For example, if you try to provide your credit card number in a form at an online shopping site, you'll be alerted if your submission is not secure.
Symantec recommends entering only partial information so that it's unavailable to anyone who might snoop through your computer files and to protect your information when sites request it in various ways. For example, your phone number could be entered with or without dashes or spaces between groups of numbers. Entering the last four digits only would always work because those numbers are always grouped together.
Despite its usefulness, I experienced problems with this feature. As a Web server administrator, I use a browser to maintain some features of my server. When Privacy Control was enabled, I was unable to update a Major-domo (a mass e-mail program) list that happened to contain my own e-mail address.
Ad Blocking
Readers of my previous article on free firewall software will recall my enthusiasm for ad blocking capability. This feature contained in Norton Internet Security does not disappoint. When ad blocking is enabled, every time you connect to a Web site the program scans the Web page and compares page contents to two lists: 1) a default list of ads that Norton Internet Security Professional blocks automatically, and 2) A custom list that you create.
Norton's list: If the page includes files from a blocked domain, Norton Internet Security Professional removes the link to the ad and downloads the rest of the page. (You'll see an empty space where the ad would have been displayed.)
Create your own list: When Norton Internet Security Professional is enabled, you'll see the Alert Tracker, a small graphic that looks like half of a globe on the right edge of your computer screen. The logo will slide out to the left from time to time to let you know that programs are accessing the Internet, or to provide alerts. On the right half of that bar is the Ad trashcan. If you click on the link "Ad Trashcan" a window opens with instructions for blocking ads. (If you see an ad, that means it is not already on the default list.)
If you use Internet Explorer, you can click on the ad and drag it to the trash can icon in the window. Then you can "add" it to the list of blocked ads. However, you'll probably first want to modify the long URL for that particular ad. For example, if the advertisement url is "http://www.advertiser.org/annoying/ads/numberone.gif," you could change it to "http://www.advertiser.org/annoying/ads," which will then block everything in the "ads" directory. You could even shorten it to "http://www.advertise.org" to block anything that originates at "http://www.advertiser.org."
Productivity Control
This feature lets you control user access to the Internet. As a "Supervisor" (the person who installed the program is automatically the Supervisor) you could block access to Web sites and newsgroups that you find inappropriate. You can also block access to applications, such as chat, that you don't want users to access. This feature could be useful in an office or home situation. By the way, Productivity Control is disabled by default, so you have to actually re-enable the feature for it to operate.
Symantec's support
Despite my familiarity with similar software, I experienced some problems while using the program. I'm not one to quickly call for help, as I prefer to first try to figure things out on my own. But I was stymied and called Symantec tech support. I spoke at length with Steve Burns, a knowledgeable and helpful tech support person at Symantec. He patiently led me through my set-up and program configuration and gave me some great advice on tweaking my start-up files for optimum performance. Unfortunately, these adjustments did not cure the problems I experienced with other programs "freezing" while I had Internet Security Professional installed.
Recommendation
While I have kept Norton AntiVirus installed on my computer, I've removed the remainder of the Norton Internet Security program. Despite its many useful features, the program seemed to interfere too much with other applications to suit my working preferences. Suddenly other programs would stop responding and I needed to "end task" too many times a day. Since Norton Internet Security was the newest install, I tried uninstalling to see if the problem went away. It did, so I've reverted to my free firewall program.
Admittedly, there are potentially many reasons why such interference may occur, and you may experience smooth operation. Remember, the more software you have on your system, the more likely the chance of interference and other operating incompatibilities. Nevertheless, this anti-virus and firewall software, despite my experience, is useful, feature-rich, from a well-known source, and dollar-for-dollar a good value. If you have a need for such software, by all means consider it.
© Copyright 2002 by Sound Internet Strategy. All rights reserved