It can be difficult to choose the best antivirus security application for your home or office. With so many choices, which ones provide the best protection and offer a smooth user experience? Two of the leading commercial security packages are Kaspersky Antivirus and Symantec Norton 360. They are hands down the leaders in the field. But, which one of these packages is the better choice?
Basic Protection
No matter how many features Kaspersky and Norton have, if they don’t provide good basic protection they aren’t of much use to anyone. So how do they stack up? In all tests, both packages do a superb job with a slight edge to Kaspersky in providing great protection from all types of threats including viruses, malware, trojans and even adware. Both Kaspersky Antivirus and Symantec Norton 360 provide the protection virtually any user would need whether they are at home or at the office.
User Experience
While both Norton and Kaspersky are quite easy on the surface to use, there are differences in both the user friendliness and the user experience with the two security suites. Kaspersky allows you to set it and forget it. It gets out the way and will take care of everything for you so you don’t have to think about it. Norton, on the other hand, tends to constantly pop up with a variety of questions and warnings that can annoy users over time. However, setting Kaspersky and leaving it is not always the best thing. Kaspersky will continue to run making decisions for you that can change your computer without your knowledge. While some users simply won’t care, other power users might take issue with it making changes to their computers. Norton leaves those questions to use so if you don’t mind the questions, Norton is the choice for you.
System Resource Utilization
We all want an antivirus package that will protect us from all potential threats but won’t interfere with our day to day computing needs. Symantec Norton 360 used to be infamous for slowing down systems once installed. However, Symantec has redesigned Norton to create a security software package that is lightweight and runs smoothly on virtually all types of machines. Kaspersky, however, is well known for being a bit of a resource hog and it still is to this day. If you use a modern machine you shouldn’t notice any type of slowdowns but if your machine has a little age on it you might notice Kaspersky choking your processing power making it more difficult to use every day tasks. This is most apparent when Kaspersky updates its definitions so it stays current.
Feature Sets
We all love features and even expect them in virtually every software product we have. Security software is no different and both Kaspersky and Symantec Norton 360 offer powerful feature sets to help protect your computer from threats. These features often extend well beyond basic scanning and removal of security threats. Each package, for example, offers a sandbox mode feature set. This feature moves potential threats to the sandbox to deal with them safely and securely. Kaspersky’s sandbox mode is more fully featured than Norton’s sandbox. In Norton, potential threats are quarantined in the sandbox and simply removed the system. Kaspersky, on the other hand, quarantines the potential threats then monitors them before simply removing them from the system. This allows for great control over threats and helps reduce false positives as well.
While both Kaspersky Antivirus and Symantec Norton 360 are great choices for your security software needs, Kaspersky offers a little better experience in both protection and usability for regular users. It’s sandbox features are advanced and it will monitor your system without nagging you constantly about what it is doing. This makes Kaspersky the winner overall. However, if you run slightly older systems or prefer more hands on control and don’t mind the constant questions, Symantec Norton 360 is the best alternative to Kaspersky for protection.