Symantec's Norton 360 beta released

The Cupertino, Calif. company has marketed the service as a defense against viruses, worms, trojans, spyware, adware, hackers and other internet threats.

Differentiating it from other consumer products, Norton 360 does not send out alerts to consumers, it instead automatically resolving the issues without user notification.

"Today's consumers want to be able to work and play in the connected world with confidence that their information and activities are secure," said Enrique Salem, group president for Symantec's Consumer Business Group. Norton 360 was created to provide computer users and their families a full range of protection that is automatic, powerful and easy to understand and use."

Symantec's competitors have also been hard at work in recent months.

McAfee in June encouraged the public to test portions of its new security platform, code-named "Falcon."

Microsoft changed the dynamic of the consumer security services market in late May when it released Live its all-in-one security blanket for PCs, which includes anti-virus and anti-spyware protection, a two-way firewall, automatic updates computer maintenance functions and file backup and recovery capabilities.

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