New Norton betas available for free download

Symantec has released 2012 beta versions of Norton AntiVirus and Norton Internet Security.

The new betas are said to improve on installation times, scan times and memory usage as well as include security enhancements such as 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 Jens Meggers, vice president of engineering, Norton products. "For the Norton 2012 release, our aim is to continue to raise the bar for both protection and performance.”

The betas feature Insight 3.0, which is the latest version of Norton’s reputation-based security technology. This uses 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, now lets users know if a downloaded application is likely to cause stability issues when installed.

The betas also include upgraded SONAR 4.0 behavioural protection, which monitors running apps for suspicious behaviour.

Both 2012 betas take a user’s bandwidth into account, by postponing non-critical updates to a later time, "particularly useful for consumers with limited data plans”, says Symantec.

The beta is available for free public download now.