Defence is the best way to stay away from online threats!

David Hall,
Regional Product Manager - Asia Pacific,
Consumer Products and Solutions, Symantec 

What kind of new features have been introduced in these new products? 

We have been working very hard over many years to be able to deliver best services. We have earlier launched products like Norton Online Family, which is a set of online tools to be able to understand what is going on in your kid's online lives. These same technologies have been incorporated in the Norton Threat Security products. Since performance is something which is of paramount importance, we have taken care to include this aspect. This product also happens to be one of the fastest and lightest security products available and by making it perform faster, we have been able to do away with badly performing PCs. With Norton 2011, if you download any application, there is no fear of your PC slowing down. It will tell you what is the application that is eventually slowing down your PC. You also have the option of uninstalling that application if you think that it is responsible for bad performance. 

How are Norton products doing from all the other security products available in the market? 

The main reason why people buy security products is that they want protection from the ongoing cyber threats. In fact, professional testing labs are coming out with amazing results. It shows how better Norton products are doing compared to other security products. By keeping the threats away from your PC, you have a much better chance of not becoming a victim of cybercrime and this is what Norton products have been doing. It has always been our constant endeavour to make the cyber world safe and user friendly so that more and more users can use it without becoming its victim.

Could you throw some light on the 26-city road show that Symantec is planning to conduct?

We are conducting a 26-city road show between 28th September and 29th October and have a roadmap of covering all the key cities across the country. We have already visited Delhi and Bangalore and are going to visit the rest of the cities very soon. We plan to spend a lot of time with our partners and help them know about how to keep their consumers protected. We will also take this opportunity to promote our antivirus products in general and educate our partners in particular about the kinds of threats online and the technologies that they can serve their customers with.   

What is the level of preparedness among Indians when it comes to fighting back cybercrime?

A study conducted recently in India by Norton has showed many new revelations, bringing to light the fact that Indian Internet users are not far away from the menace of cybercrime that has already hit many of their counterparts across the globe. The Norton Cybercrime Report has reported that 76% of the Indian adults have been the victims of cybercrime, the most common being virus, malware and Trojan. But things like phishing scams, online scam, identity theft, credit card fraud,  amongst others, are also slowly picking up and would change the entire threat landscape.   

Norton also tried to assess the emotional impact that cybercrime has on users. In fact, we were the first one to gauge the emotional impact of such crimes on users. It has been found out that people are usually angry, upset and annoyed after being hit online. A lot of feedback coming in also shows some amount of awareness on the part of Indian users. 72% of the respondents are reportedly said to not give out their passwords, while another 72% feel that financial details and data should be kept safe and confidential and not to be parted with while staying online. 

But the Indian users also ended up giving strange advice and suggestions. Some people keep telling that one should use only big brands, which is not necessarily true. Spams can attack big brands as much as they attack small brands.

For more contact:
samrita@varindia.com