Norton Internet Security 4 for Mac

A comprehensive protection package for Mac users




Mac users have not needed to worry too much about security in recent years, but a few recent security alerts have convinced more of them to invest in some security software.

Internet Security for Mac is pretty comprehensive; as well as anti-virus it includes Norton Firewall and Norton Confidential to offer protection against phishing and other breaches of confidential data.

Installation required a reboot and. in our case. an additional 60MB of data in updates - the original install is around 90MB - though the initial setup did seem a bit sluggish.

A menu at the top of the screen gave easy access to the component parts. The first anti-virus scan took a while, but subsequent ones were much quicker. Norton Confidential can block phishing sites: in our tests. it worked some of the time, but failed to block some sites that the latest version of Safari flagged as phishing. You can also bar certain types of information - such as addresses and credit card info - from being sent over the internet. unless a password is supplied. A further feature prevents certain documents from being opened - handy on a shared Mac.

The Firewall is 'Locaton aware' and will automatically alter its settings when a Mac is plugged into a different network; it seems to work well, and displays alerts when connections to or from your Mac are attempted - the built-in firewall is one way only.




The suite has an attractive interface, though you have to launch components separately to configure them. It's a reasonable price for a year's protection, and the confidential data protection and automatic location switching are useful -- although the latter really just automates things you could do yourself. But for simple protection, it's definitely worth a look. Nigel Whitfield

Personal Computer World April 2009