Product manual
About Vulnerability Protection
Vulnerability Protection is a component of Intrusion
Prevention System. Vulnerability Protection provides
information about the susceptibility of the programs
that may be on your computer against malicious
attacks. It also provides information about the known
attacks that they are protected from.
Vulnerabilities are flaws in your programs or your
operating system that can create weaknesses in overall
security of your system. Improper computer
configurations or security configurations also create
vulnerabilities. External attackers exploit these
vulnerabilities and perform malicious actions on your
computer. Examples of such malicious attacks are
active desktop monitoring, keylogging, and hacking.
Such attacks can slow down the performance of your
computer, cause program failure, or expose your
personal data and confidential information to the
hackers.
Norton Internet Security provides signature-based
solutions to protect your computer from the most
common Internet attacks. Attack signatures contain
the information that identifies an attacker’s attempt
to exploit a known vulnerability in your operating
system or the programs that are installed on your
computer. The Intrusion Prevention feature of Norton
Internet Security uses an extensive list of attack
signatures to detect and block suspicious network
activity.
Vulnerability Protection lets you view the correlation
between the vulnerabilities that your computer is
protected against and the programs that may contain
these vulnerabilities. For example, if Internet Explorer
does not handle certain HTTP responses, it can result
in a vulnerability that can be exploited. In this case,
Vulnerability Protection lists Internet Explorer as a
vulnerable program. It also provides details about the
signatures that Intrusion Prevention uses to detect any
attempt to exploit this vulnerability.
Protecting Internet activities
About Vulnerability Protection
280