If you haven't totally cut the cord, you've probably seen TV advertisements touting the combination of Norton's security suite with LifeLock identity theft protection.
It probably won't come as a surprise to learn that the company behind both products is now called NortonLifeLock.
The Symantec name still exists, but it, along with Symantec's enterprise-level business, now belongs to Broadcom.
Where the basic Norton AntiVirus Plus just protects one Windows or macOS device, Norton 360 Deluxe lets you protect Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS devices.
It adds a full-powered VPN, Dark Web Monitoring, Parental Control, and more.
Windows users get special enhancements including Online Banking Protection and 50GB of hosted storage for online backups.
This suite packs a ton of features, for a very reasonable price.
A year's subscription to Norton 360 Deluxe lists for $99.99, which gets you five security suite and VPN licenses to use on your devices.
That's impressive, given that after the first year, Norton's VPN alone would cost $79.99 per year.
Webroot's cross-platform suite runs $79.99 for five licenses, while Trend Micro Maximum Security 's is $89.95 per year for three.
McAfee Total Protection costs the same per year as Norton, but the subscription lets you install protection on every device in your household.
In the unlikely event that you truly have just one device to protect, you might consider Norton 360 Standard.
This single-license subscription costs $20 less than Deluxe; it also cuts your online backup storage to 10GB.
There must be a market, or Norton wouldn't bother with this offering, but for most users Norton 360 Deluxe is a much better deal.
On the flip side, if you're shopping for Norton at Walmart, Amazon, or certain other retailers, you may encounter Norton 360 Premium (10 licenses, 75GB of storage) or Norton 360 Platinum (20 licenses, 100GB of storage).
This review focuses on Deluxe.
If you show your support by signing up for automatic renewal, Norton reciprocates with a Virus Protection Promise.
That means if malware infests one of your devices despite Norton's protection, a tech support expert will remotely log in and remediate the problem.
If the support expert can't make things right, you can apply for a refund.
McAfee and Check Point ZoneAlarm Extreme Security offer similar guarantees.
My Norton, My Way
With the current product line, Norton strongly emphasizes making sure customers take advantage of all their Norton benefits.
To that end, the My Norton app becomes the suite's overall face.
It features a soothing nature scene at left, somewhat reminiscent of the nature backgrounds in Panda's security apps.
Down the right side, it lists six significant security components: Device Security, Dark Web Monitoring, Secure VPN, Cloud Backup, Password Manager, and Parental Controls.
At the top, it displays the number of licenses you've used, with a link to install protection on more devices.
Clicking to open Device Security brings up a window that long-time Norton users will find very familiar.
One big panel reflects your security status, along with stats like Most Recent Update and Most Recent Scan.
Five big button panels link to Security, Online Safety, Backup, Performance, and My Norton.
Clicking that last one takes you back to the My Norton app.
Clicking one of the other four slides down the whole row of panels, revealing more buttons related to the one you clicked.
For example, clicking Backup shows icons for Run Backup, Restore Files, and Backup Sets.
After installation, be sure to run a Live Update.
Even though the status panel indicated my protection updates were current, the Live Update found more to install.
You should also launch each of the browsers that you use and at least install the Norton Toolbar.
You can also add other extensions: Norton Safe Search, which marks dangerous search results; Norton Home Page, which puts Safe Search and a collection of quick links on your home page; and the Norton Password Manager.
You won't find a button for the firewall component—to tweak the firewall configuration, you dive straight into Settings.
If you find the list of settings overwhelming, just click the search icon at top right in the main window.
Not only does it search across all pages of the Settings dialog, like the similar feature in ESET Multi-Device Security Pack, it even lets you tweak simple on/off settings right in the search results.
Shared Antivirus Features
Of course, this suite incorporates all the features of Norton AntiVirus Plus, and adds even more.
Please read that review for my detailed findings; I'll summarize here.
Lab Test Results Chart
Malware Protection Results Chart
Phishing Protection Results Chart
In addition to the expected full, quick, and custom antivirus scans, you can run the aggressive Norton Power Eraser to root out persistent threats.
The full scan ran much more quickly than when last tested, likely due to my increasing the number of virtual processors in my virtual machine test systems.
A Norton Insight scan identifies trusted programs that don't need to be scanned for malware, and the Diagnostic Report identifies a wide range of system problems.
All four independent antivirus testing labs I follow include Norton in their regular reports, and it aces most of the tests.
For example, Norton achieved AAA certification (the best of five certification levels) from SE Labs, and took a perfect 18 of 18 points from AV-Test Institute.
It also passed both the grueling tests performed by MRG-Effitas, while more than a third of tested products failed at least one.
Norton's aggregate lab score of 9.8 points is excellent.
Looking at other products tested by all four labs, only one has done better.
With 9.9 points, Avira Prime($79.99 For 5 Devices Per Year (20% Off) at Avira) is the current record holder.
Kaspersky held a 9.9 aggregate score until recently, but a minor bobble took it down to 9.7, for now.
Norton didn't score quite as well in my hands-on malware protection tests, earning 9.0 of 10 possible points.
However, when the labs praise a product to the skies, I give their results more weight.
Malwarebytes, Sophos, and Windows Defender are tied for best score at present, all with 9.8 points.
Webroot SecureAnywhere AntiVirus had the best detection rate, at 100 percent.
Challenged with 100 recently discovered malware-hosting URLs, Norton defended the test system by blocking the browser's access to a bit more than half of them and wiping out most of the remainder by quarantining the malware payload.
Its overall 97 percent score matches that of Windows Defender.
That's quite good, but not the top score.
McAfee, Sophos, and Vipre Advanced Security all scored a perfect 100 percent.
Phishing sites are fraudulent pages that ape secure sites and try to fool visitors into giving away their credentials.
Using several different techniques, Norton detected 99 percent of the very recent real-world phishing pages I used for testing.
Norton 360's macOS edition proved almost as effective, though it missed a few pages caught by its Windows cousin.
Few others have scored so well.
In their latest phishing protection challenges, Bitdefender Total Security and McAfee tied with Norton, while Kaspersky and Trend Micro both scored 100 percent.
Norton's current edition adds Script Control and Data Protector to its malware protection arsenal.
I didn't find a way to test Script Control, which strips scripts from downloaded documents.
Data Protector aims to keep ransomware from damaging your documents even if regular real-time protection misses the attack.
However, in testing with real-time protection turned off, it only caught about one in three real-world ransomware samples.
See How We Test Security Software
Other Shared Features
As the "Plus" in the name suggests, Norton AntiVirus Plus goes beyond the features of a simple antivirus.
Its Intrusion Prevention system aims to block exploits at the network level, and indeed it did block every exploit I threw at it.
However, a little digging revealed that it wasn't detecting the exploit activity so much as detecting the penetration testing tool I used.
I'm sure that feature works, but my test didn't really demonstrate its abilities.
Norton's firewall protects against outside attack, as any firewall must.
It also aims to prevent programs from misusing your network connection.
For program control, it automatically configures permissions for known good programs and puts extra scrutiny on the behavior of unknowns.
It proved resistant to tampering in our testing.
And yes, you get this high-end firewall as part of the nominally standalone antivirus.
New in this edition, the firewall includes specific protection against network shenanigans such as man-in-the-middle attacks.
All products in the current Norton line come with local and online backup.
The only difference is the amount of hosted online storage Norton provides.
With the antivirus, you get just 2GB, while this suite gives you 50GB.
It's worth noting that dedicated online backup services such as IDrive typically measure storage capacity in TB, while backup components in security suites offer much less storage space.
Norton prevents your browser from visiting dangerous pages, replacing such pages with a warning.
If you ignore Norton's advice and continue to the page, you now have the option to do so in Isolation Mode.
In this mode, Norton's servers render the page and pass along a safe, sanitized version to your browser.
In a similar fashion, Online Banking Protection isolates your visits to known financial sites to prevent any meddling with your transactions.
Both features are new in the current edition.
Your Norton installation gets you Norton Password Manager, also available for free as a standalone product.
The password manager syncs across all your devices and handles all common password management tasks.
It includes an actionable password strength report, with automated password updates for a growing number of popular sites, but doesn't extend to advanced features like secure sharing and password inheritance.
A spam filter integrates with Microsoft Outlook to divert spam into its own folder; those using a different email client must define a message rule to divert the marked spam messages.
Other bonus features shared by this suite and the antivirus include a tool to manage files that launch at startup, a disk optimizer, and a simple file cleanup tool.
Dark Web Monitoring
Norton acquired identity theft mitigation service LifeLock in 2017, and the top-tier Norton suites now include varying levels of LifeLock protection.
Norton 360 Deluxe, reviewed here, doesn't come with a LifeLock subscription, but some of that LifeLock technology powers the Dark Web Monitoring feature.
Even before you do anything to configure this feature, you may get an alert based the email address associated with your Norton account.
But the real monitoring starts when you flesh out your collection of personal information.
The Dark Web Monitoring page online lists several types of personal data: Bank Accounts, Credit Cards, Phone, Address, Driver License, Insurance, Mother's Maiden Name, and Email.
The page does point out that the basic Norton 360 plan doesn't monitor as many types of info as do plans that include LifeLock.
In addition, each data entry page includes the disclaimer, "No one can prevent all identity theft.
LifeLock does not monitor all transactions at all businesses."
I went through the list and added one item of each type.
Doing so, I learned that you get to add just one driver license and mother's maiden name, up to 10 credit cards and bank accounts, and five apiece of the remaining data types.
It's smart—rather than asking you the credit card type it deduces it based on the number you enter.
Setting up this feature is simple, but I couldn't truly test it, not without somehow creating a data breach.
Checking with my Norton contacts, I learned that those whose subscription includes LifeLock get the option to track three more important data types: Social Security Number, Date of Birth, and Name.
Advanced verification steps during signup for the LifeLock-equipped suites lets Norton be sure that users are only tracking their own details.
Full-Powered VPN
Over the last few years, consumers have become more and more aware of the need to enhance local antivirus protection with a virtual private network, or VPN.
Security companies have responded by creating their own VPNs or licensing VPN technology, and many have begun to add the VPN as a security suite component.
However suite users often get nothing more than the equivalent of the company's free, feature-limited VPN.
As an example, the entire Panda product line, starting with the free antivirus, includes a VPN.
However, in every product except the expensive top-tier Panda Dome Premium($125.24/Year at Panda Security), VPN use is limited to 150GB per day.
Kaspersky and Bitdefender also offer bandwidth-limited VPN support, and charge $4.99 per month (Kaspersky) or $49.99 per year (Bitdefender) to lift that limitation.
With Norton, you get the full power of Norton Secure VPN on all five of your devices.
After a first-year discount, you'd pay $79.99 per year for the VPN as a standalone.
Getting it as part of Norton 360 is a huge bargain.
Please read Daxdi's review of Norton Secure VPN for a deep dive into this product.
Briefly, it's a simple but effective VPN, with a decent number of servers in locations around the world.
It earned better than average results in our speed tests, the company maintains a no-log policy for your privacy, and as a bonus it can block ad trackers.
However, it lacks advanced features and bans BitTorrent.
You could do better choosing a standalone VPN, but you won't go wrong using it as part of Norton 360.
SafeCam Webcam Security
Some of your personal data translates easily into money.
A ne'er-do-well who steals your credit card or bank account details can usually wring some cash out, even if you quickly shut down the compromised account.
That kind of personal data theft is nasty, but understandable.
Creepier types of spyware subvert the webcam in your laptop, activating the camera without the tell-tale light and peeking out at you wherever you may be.
Norton's SafeCam spyware protection system aims to keep pervy peepers from misusing your webcam.
Like the similar feature in Kaspersky Internet Security, SafeCam defaults to allowing camera...
