Norton Mobile Security
has taken the unusual step today of merging its mobile licensing so
that you pay once and can use the mobile security suite on either
Android
or iOS. It's an effort to make Norton's security more accessible, and
parent company Symantec wants to turn Norton accessibility into a
security service.
The change isn't drastic, said Con Mallon, senior director of
Norton mobile product management, but natural. "The new Norton Mobile
Security is both a Web service and a mobile service," he said in a
phone interview with CNET. "We're going to start moving away from a
hard one or two devices, and we're saying that people can use multiple
devices."
Mallon clarified that this wasn't the typical, limited number
of devices, either. "We have a anti-abuse policy
set loosely at 10
devices, but for the $30 [Norton Mobile Security costs] you can put it
on a lot of devices." Given that Norton Mobile Security works on both
Android and iOS, albeit with more features on the Android version,
that's not a bad deal for people who are not wedded to one operating
system.
Norton Mobile Security on iOS lets you backup and restore your contacts to Androids as well as other iOS devices.
(Credit:
Symantec)
The revamped apps aren't ground-breaking in the mobile security app
arena, but they do make Norton more competitive. The iOS app updates
including the ability to track a lost or stolen device on a map,
including showing the last 10 locations the device's GPS had checked in
from. It will also backup and restore your contacts list.
The Android app will let you remotely wipe your device or have
it emit a piercing "scream" to help find it. The user interfaces in
both apps and the Web portal have been improved so that the mobile apps
look the same, while the Web portal has become more streamlined.
One of the easy wins for cross-platform mobile security like
Norton is that it allows people to backup and synchronize their contact
lists. While security on mobile devices often has meant more attention
paid to finding or wiping a lost device than the traditional Windows
interpretation of blocking malware -- although that's not been the case
for Android -- Mallon said that there's a role for cross-platform
mobile security.
"Certainly one of the things we've been calling out is mobile
adware. These adware libraries are being tucked into these apps," he
said, and explained that many of these apps could scan your device
surreptitiously. "We're going to start to have to determine which are
the more annoying apps from the less annoying ones," he said, implying
that Norton and other security suites will have to warn people about
such apps
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