Norton by Symantec has released the 2012 beta versions of Norton AntiVirus and Norton Internet Security in the Middle East, which are now available for free download from the Norton beta website.

The Norton 2012 betas improve on performance and protection in what are already the industry’s fastest and lightest security products, the company said. They include key security enhancements, including the ability to assess the safety and stability of an application before installation.

“As we’ve proven year after year, we are committed to arming consumers against cybercrime with the strongest protection possible, without slowing down their computers,” said Tamim Taufiq, head of consumer sales Mena for Symantec. “For the Norton 2012 release, our aim is to continue to raise the bar for both protection and performance.”

With the 2012 betas, Norton continues to deliver the strongest core protection technologies, without sacrificing performance. The betas feature Insight 3.0, the latest version of Norton’s exclusive reputation-based security technology, which leverages the anonymous software adoption patterns of millions of contributing Symantec users to automatically identify and block new malicious software. Download Insight, which checks every downloaded file for safety before it is allowed to run, has been updated this year to include information that lets users know if a downloaded application is likely to cause stability issues when they install it on their PC.

Now Download Insight provides users with additional data they can rely on before installing an application, to decide whether to install that application or look for a similarly safe, yet more stable application. The betas also include upgraded SONAR 4.0 behavioral protection, which monitors running applications for suspicious behavior to quickly detect and disable previously unknown threats.

In terms of performance, the 2012 betas are designed to maintain or improve upon Norton’s industry-leading benchmarks in installation times, scan times and memory usage. – TradeArabia News Service