Symantec has announced that Norton Internet Security, Norton AntiVirus and Norton Confidential will offer full support for Windows Vista before the operating system will be available for the general public on January 30, 2007. Symantec also revealed that the customers that have already acquired Norton Internet Security 2006 and 2007, Norton AntiVirus 2006 and 2007 and Norton Confidential for Windows XP will be able to upgrade their product's compatibility for Vista for free.

Symantec presented a suggested retail price for a subscription period of one year for all three products. In this regard, Norton AntiVirus 2007 will come with a price tag of $39.99, Norton Internet Security 2007 - $69.99 and Norton Confidential is US$49.99.

The Cupertino-based security company will also offer subscribers of either Norton Internet Security or Norton AntiVirus an update to Symantec Online Network for Advanced Response (SONAR) zero-day detection technology.

"We've improved on Norton's already award-winning protection, and are ensuring that customers remain fully protected on the new Vista operating system," said Rowan Trollope, vice president, Consumer Business Unit, Symantec. "Our subscription service model enables us to provide our customers with cutting edge security technologies such as SONAR as soon as they become available, thereby helping ensure that customers always have the most up-to-date protection."

At the basis of Symantec, there is an extensive range of heterogeneous application behavior data designed to increase the accuracy of detections and to limit false positives. SONAR is designed to deliver protection against threats that do not have standard virus and spyware detection definitions via behavioral detection heuristics.

"What sets SONAR technology apart from the pack is that our method of heuristics-based detection is so comprehensive and accurate that it boasts a 0.0004% false positive detection rate (4 in 1,000,000 users) of potential threats," Trollope added. "This is truly unheard of in the industry and just another example of Symantec and its Norton brand providing customers state-of-the-art protection against today's most malicious security threats."