We increasingly live in a world where people access the Internet via mobile devices rather than old school PCs. This also means that mobile devices have become hotbeds for the scum of the Internet's underbelly - Malware, Viruses, phishing tools and the like. Given this, it's only appropriate that the world's most popular security brand goes mobile. While Symantec does not encompass every big mobile player - such as iOS, BlackBerry and Symbian - with Norton Mobile security for Android, Symantec is trying to establish a customer base in the world's fastest growing smartphone platform. Read on to find out if Symantec's mobile security companion is worth its weight in gold.
USABILITY:
Now, as this is a Norton product, we have the famed black and gold Norton theme flowing in the app. Personally, we hate it but it has been around forever and most users will be familiar with it.
The interface is pretty simple to learn and Norton manages this without skimping on functionality which is often the case with mobile security suites like F-Secure.
There are basically four areas of security where the Norton Mobile Security Suite focuses its energies - Anti-Theft, Anti-Malware, Call&SMS Blocking and Web Protection. Considering this is a mobile app, Norton manages to cover multiple verticals of the security paradigm, which is pretty commendable in itself. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating and this is where the Norton Mobile Security truly shines.
In the Anti-Theft section of the app Norton provides the ability to track a lost phone via Google Maps, and the cool part about this is that it even works if the device's GPS itself is deactivated. All one has to do is SMS via a designated device and within 5 minutes we get the Google Maps link in a reply.
A particular problem today is being bombarded with a legion of undesirable messages and calls. For this, the security suite has a solution - A Call & SMS Blocker. While the functionality itself is pretty rudimentary, it works to the tee. Various blocking apps allowed us to block contacts from our contacts and create a blacklist, here we can also just pluck out the undesirables from either our call logs or SMSs. This was handy indeed. We can assure you that within an hour of using this tool our inbox became lighter.
As far as Web Protection went, the Norton Mobile Security app again came through - but only on the native Android browser, which was a bummer. We understand no support for either Opera Mini or Dolphin, but how could Norton miss an opportunity on the new mobile Firefox? Apart from this flaw there's very little else in terms of downsides. The feature worked exactly as advertised. It blocked sites from a predefined list, which Norton constantly updates. Before blocking, Norton Mobile Security would pull up a pop-up which would give us a security warning and also the option to ignore it. But it would still ensure safe browsing as the site would remain unblocked only for a 30 minute window.
Now, its most touted feature - the Anti-Malware scanner. We would say it's right up there with the likes of Kaspersky Mobile and provides users a very solid set of Malware scanning tools. Obviously all this starts with robust anti-malware signatures and scanning heuristics, but on a mobile platform is the amount of resources the app utilizes. Norton has long been labelled the eternal resource hog on the PC, but thankfully their mobile app was light on our Samsung Galaxy S 2, which already was running a myriad of applications in the background. We are not joking here, in the flat-out OS scan the app was done in less than 10 seconds, then it completed a total memory scan which included approximately 10GB of data on internal memory and 7 GB of data on the SD card in less than 35 seconds. This is not just fast - it's the fastets. Norton's scanning chops beat all contemporaries - Kaspersky, F-Secure and MacAfee - in terms of speed. Apart from this, the app also offered scheduled scans rounding off an impeccable security feature set.
VERDICT:
At present the Norton Mobile Security suite offers a blend of robust functionality and sublime performance, which is more akin to a desktop class security suite rather than a mobile suite. For Android users this is the best one in the market but then again it comes with a sticker price of Rs 599, which is pretty steep considering that 80% of these features can be achieved via freeware.
However we would still recommend it to anyone using Android nonstop. Get this for safety reasons as malware problems on the platform are exploding day by day.