Having already stated my long affinity for Symantec's Norton Internet Security (NIS), I wanted to point out the excellent dashboard called Norton Protection Center that comes with NIS 2006.
You can't miss the yellow icon that sits in the System Tray. If everything is working fine, you see a check mark in a green circle; if not, you get an indication that something needs to be fixed and NIS fixes it. Want is also really neat is that clicking on the icon opens up a larger screen that lists coverage in five key areas:
- Security Basics
- Email & Messaging
- Web Browsing
- Data Recovery
- Performance
Each of these areas then has a circle (and text) that let you know your coverage status:
- Full coverage
- Limited coverage
- No coverage
NIS give you:
- Security Basics -- Full coverage
- Email & Messaging -- Full coverage
- Web Browsing -- Limited coverage
- Data Recovery -- No coverage
- Performance -- Limited coverage
To supersize this to total coverage, you need to add Symantec's SystemWorks. We'll get under the hood of that program in a blog coming your way soon ...