The Norton name has been around for as long as the IBM PC (and PCMag). When you’re taking a big step like starting a small business, relying on a long-standing company like Norton for your company's security can be a smart move. Norton Small Business Premium protects your company's computers with award-winning antivirus technology and useful business features, including 24/7 support and brand identity protection. That said, Bitdefender Ultimate Small Business Security also offers this functionality and provides additional business-specific features, including support for mobile devices, digital identity protection for employees, and asset exposure alerts for your company, making it an Editors' Choice winner. And if remote management is your primary concern, Avast Premium Business Security is our other top pick.

How Much Does Norton Small Business Premium Cost?

When your business gets big enough, you need an IT department to handle security. How big can you get before that’s needed? There’s no set size, but one possible measure is whether you still know the names of all your employees. Most small business suites seem to aim for a maximum of 20 to 25.

With Norton Small Business Premium, pricing is simple. You can pay $299.99 per year to cover 10 employees or $399.99 to cover 20. Do note that these subscriptions cover two devices per employee. Bitdefender, too, has subscriptions based on the number of employees, with two devices per employee and from one to five licenses for server protection. For $799.99 per year, your Bitdefender subscription can cover 25 employees and 50 devices.

At $799.99 per year for 20 devices, Malwarebytes for Teams looks twice as expensive as Norton. But since Norton’s offer is 40 devices spread among 20 employees, the difference is actually greater. As for ESET Small Business Security, you’d pay $410 per year for 20 devices or $512.50 for 25. ESET, too, costs more than Norton on a per-device basis.

Various mergers over the last few years have led to Avast Premium Business Security, AVG Internet Security Business Edition, and Norton all belonging to the same parent company, Gen Digital. These three even share the same antivirus engine. However, pricing for the business security suites couldn’t be more different. Avast and AVG cover from 1 to 999 devices, with a per-device rate that diminishes as the number of devices goes up. To match Norton’s 40 devices, you’d pay $1,697.60 per year for AVG or $1,749.20 for Avast. Both Avast and AVG max out at around $23,000 for 999 devices.

One more thing: Provided you’ve shown your commitment by enabling automatic renewal, Norton reciprocates with its virus protection promise. If malware gets past your Norton protection, the support team will dig in and manually eliminate the infestation. In the rare event that support fails, you get a refund.

Getting Started With Norton Small Business Premium

As with Norton’s consumer products, your journey starts when you register your purchase with the My Norton portal online and download the installer. After installation is complete, the suite goes through an initialization sequence to get all the features running correctly.

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Norton includes dark web monitoring for each employee. Initially, it just monitors your primary email, but you can add more information, up to five email addresses, five phone numbers, and five credit cards. There’s also business-specific dark web monitoring, which I’ll discuss below.

Next, you activate the 500GB of cloud storage for backup that comes with your subscription. That’s a simple matter of clicking the big Activate button. Right away, Norton starts backing up your Documents, Desktop, Pictures, and Music folders (excluding videos). Naturally, you can fine-tune what gets backed up later. After backup is squared away, Norton asks for your approval to automatically enable the VPN when you connect to an untrusted network.

It’s unlikely you’d buy this suite to protect just one PC. The initialization scheme encourages you to protect more devices, with a page that makes it easy to share an installation link by email or text, or copy it into some other medium. For mobile devices, you can snap a QR code. Finally, Norton prompts you to set up the password manager, which I’ll discuss below. You can skip any of these setup steps and return to them by clicking the Set Up Protection link in the main window. When you’ve accomplished all five steps, that link disappears.

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The suite’s main window looks very much like that of the standalone antivirus. A simple menu down the left provides these options: Home, Security, Performance, Privacy, Search, and Settings. Along the right side is a panel that can either display current alerts or provide Control Panel access to important features. And in the middle, you see the current security status and a summary of devices used, plus a simple button to run a smart scan.

Features Shared With Norton AntiVirus Plus

Antivirus protection is at the core of every security suite, whether aimed at consumers or small businesses. Naturally, this suite includes all the features found in Norton AntiVirus Plus, which is itself an Editors’ Choice. Please read that review for all the details; I’ll provide a summary here.

I closely follow five antivirus testing labs around the world that contribute to the greater good by testing popular antivirus apps and reporting their findings. Oh, they don’t do it just out of goodness; they get paid by the antivirus companies whose technology they evaluate. The number of labs testing a given antivirus gives a rough idea of its importance. Norton, like Avast, appears in the latest reports from all five labs. Yep, it’s important.

Norton earned perfect scores from AVLab Cybersecurity Foundation, AV-Test Institute, MRG-Effitas, and SE Labs. With AV-Comparatives, an antivirus that does well enough to pass gets Standard certification, while those that go beyond the minimum can receive Advanced or Advanced+ certification. In three recent tests by this lab, Norton earned one apiece of Standard, Advanced, and Advanced+ ratings.

With some labs providing named success levels and others reporting in numbers or percentages, comparison can be tough. I’ve devised an Excel spreadsheet to map all the results onto a 10-point scale and combine them into an aggregate score. That calculation yields 9.6 points for both Norton and Avast.

ESET doesn’t show up in current reports from SE Labs, but the other four assigned it the maximum possible score, yielding a perfect 10-point aggregate score. Also tested by four labs, Bitdefender and McAfee turned in an impressive 9.8-point score, while Microsoft lagged with 8.8. AVG and Malwarebytes also reached a 10-point aggregate, but their scores come from just two labs each.

Few security apps boast a five-lab sweep like Norton, but more than a third of those I track exhibit a different kind of sweep—no results at all. About another sixth show up in just one lab’s test results. With or without lab results, I can always rely on my hands-on testing. I put every antivirus through a series of tests that give me useful scores for comparison and let me experience the app doing its job.

My malware blocking test starts when I bring the antivirus's attention to a collection of malware that I gathered and curated myself. For some, just opening the folder containing samples is enough to trigger a scan. Others scan when a file is launched or moved. And for others, Norton among them, every downloaded file gets vetted by real-time antivirus. For testing, I downloaded all my samples from cloud storage.

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Norton detected and eliminated two-thirds of the samples during download. That’s helpful, but others have detected more. McAfee+ and UltraAV, notably, wiped out every sample in this first phase, and Malwarebytes managed 99%. With most apps, the initial culling leaves behind anywhere from a few to a few dozen files. To complete my test, I launch those files and note how the antivirus reacts.

Overall, Norton detected 97% of the samples and scored 9.7 out of 10 possible points. Avast and AVG earned precisely the same score, a strong reminder that the three products use the same antivirus engine. Malwarebytes beats this trio by a hair, with 99% detection and 9.9 points. At the top, with a perfect 10, are McAfee and UltraAV.

Given that sourcing and analyzing a new set of malware takes weeks, I necessarily use the same samples for months at a time. To see how each antivirus fends off the latest malware, I start with a feed of malware-hosting URLs supplied by testing lab MRG-Effitas. For each sample URL, I record whether the security app blocks access to the dangerous URL, quarantines the malware payload, or sits idly without acting in your defense. I keep at it until I have around 100 data points.

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Along with UltraAV and Aura, Norton managed 99% protection, a feat beaten only by Avira Prime, Guardio, and Sophos Home Premium, each with a perfect 100% score.

Looking at other small business suites, most at least topped 90%. ESET, Avast, AVG, and Bitdefender reached 95%, 94%, 93%, and 92% respectively. With just 83% protection, Malwarebytes is an outlier.

The same browser security that flags malware-hosting pages also serves to identify phishing websites. A phishing site masquerades as a legitimate, secure site of some kind, anything from banking to dating. If you type your username and password into the fake site, you’ve handed over your account to the phishing fraudsters.

In a business setting, the consequences of phishing are amplified. It’s one thing if fraudsters gain control of your Club Penguin account, but quite another if the compromised account controls HR or payroll for your small business. And as loyal as your employees may be, they don’t necessarily have the skills to detect a phishing attack. Fortunately, most antivirus and security suite apps do their own scanning and warn you (and your employees) away from these frauds.

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To test this feature, I start by gathering hundreds of reported frauds from websites that collect them, making sure to include some that are too new to have been analyzed and blocklisted. I launch each simultaneously in four browsers, three relying on protection built into Chrome, Edge, and Firefox, and one defended by the antivirus under test. After discarding all but verified phishing attempts, I analyze the results.

All the small business suites I’ve tested did very well in this test, some of them very well. The lowest score was 96% for Malwarebytes, which is still way better than scores from the three browsers. Avast, Bitdefender, and Norton all detected 99% of the real-world phishing pages, while AVG and ESET attained a perfect 100%.

As an added shield against the depredations of ransomware attacks, Norton bans all unauthorized programs from making changes to protected files. Out of the box, the ransomware protection system monitors the Desktop, Documents, Music, Pictures, and Videos folders for all users. It specifically protects file types such as documents, audio, and images. Do review the list of protected file types, to make sure it covers all types important to you. For example, you might want to add protection for .TXT files. By default, it allows access for known and trusted programs. If you get a warning about an unknown program attempting access, you can choose to block that access.

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To test this feature, I had to turn off all other real-time antivirus components. Norton detected all but one of a dozen real-world ransomware samples the moment they tried to touch a protected program. However, all the samples managed to encrypt some files outside the protected folders, from dozens to thousands of them. Do remember that I couldn’t begin to perform this test without turning off layer after layer of standard protection.

More Shared Antivirus Features

There’s a reason for the “plus” in the name Norton AntiVirus Plus. This app goes way beyond the basics of wiping out malware and defending against future attacks. All the components of the standalone antivirus are also available in the business suite reviewed here. You’ll find full details about the shared features in my review of the antivirus. Keep reading for a summary.

Browsers and Browser Extensions

Your browser is the most convenient entry point for a malware attack, so Norton adds protection. Installing four extensions in Chrome, Edge, or Firefox seems daunting, but Norton automates the process, leaving just a few clicks. Norton Safe Web is the most important, but you may also want to try out Norton Safe Search, Norton Home Page, and even Norton Coupons.

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If you’re willing to switch away from your current favorite browser, you can up your security game by relying on Norton Private Browser, installed as part of the security suite. All the Gen security lines include some version of the private browser, with varying feature sets. The Security & Privacy Center in Norton’s version provides quick access to Norton Security, Privacy Guard, Web Shield, Private Mode, Password Managers, Extension Guard, and Privacy Cleaner. The most significant is Privacy Guard, an ad and tracker blocking system.

Varied Scan Choices

As noted, a big button on the main window launches what Norton calls a Smart Scan. This scan runs a quick check for active malware and then checks for any network security issues or “advanced issues”. On my test system, the smart scan finished in four minutes and found no problems in any of the three areas. Even if you never click that button, Norton runs the smart scan once a week.

You can optionally run the quick scan without the other smart scan components, or have Norton perform a full scan of the whole computer. The targets scan feature, called custom scan by some competitors, lets you restrict the scan to a specific drive or folder.

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If these scans don’t seem to do the job, you can invoke Norton’s startup scan, which runs before Windows loads. And if that doesn’t work, well, even the toughest malware should yield to Norton’s bootable rescue disk.

Full-Powered Firewall

The first antivirus apps to evolve into security suites almost invariably contained two core elements: antivirus and firewall. Yes, Windows has a firewall built in, and it does a decent job of fending off network-based attacks. Norton takes on that same task and goes beyond, with features including intelligent control of network permissions for your apps and detection of attempts to exploit vulnerabilities.

Some early personal firewalls put the whole task of program control in the hands of the user. This naturally led to chaos. Norton, by contrast, configures permissions for known and trusted programs without ever bothering the user. Known bad programs get quarantined, naturally. As for any unknowns that attempt network access, Norton cranks up its monitoring and quashes any app that abuses its network privileges.

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As always, I tried to disable firewall protection using techniques available to malware coders. My attempts all failed, mostly hitting an Access Denied error.

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You can review the multi-page collection of firewall settings if you like, but think twice before making any changes. The firewall is configured for optimum security.

Performance Features

In days of yore, some security apps deservedly gained a reputation as resource hogs. If your employee turns off the antivirus on suspicion that it’s slowing down the PC, that’s poor security. Norton, like many competitors, heads off any complaints about performance impact by adding a handful of features designed to improve performance. The performance page features big panels for Software Updater, File Cleanup, and Startup Manager, as well as a banner that launched Norton’s disk optimization feature.

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The developers of your favorite apps are constantly updating and improving them, focusing on patching any security holes as quickly as possible. However, your apps are still vulnerable to an exploit until you apply the corresponding patch. The software updater component scans for missing patches and reports its findings. On my test system, Norton reported updates needed for Chrome, Firefox, Visual C++, and VMware Tools. Fixing those problems is as easy as clicking Update next to each or turning on Auto-Update.

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Cleaning up unwanted files has a double benefit. First, it recovers valuable disk space. Second, it wipes out clues a snoop could use to profile your computer and browser behaviors. Even if you don’t touch it, the file cleanup system runs automatically once a week and cleans up Windows temp files and Recycle Bin files. You can configure a daily or monthly schedule if you like, and optionally configure it to delete browser history.

Various apps and utilities you install may set themselves to launch at startup and then wait in the background until you call on them. Norton’s Startup Manager lists all those startup apps along with information about their impact on startup time and their prevalence among Norton users. You can reversibly disable any of these from automatic launch or set them to launch a while after startup.

Cloud Backup Automation

All the Norton antivirus and suite apps come with online backup, differing only in the amount of hosted storage for backups. The standalone antivirus comes with 2GB to store the most important files. With the Norton 360 Deluxe suite, that figure rises to 50GB. The business suite, reviewed here, comes with 500GB of storage, shared across all Windows devices managed by the subscription.

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You do have to click a button to activate backup during installation, but once you do that, the backup system gets to work. Out of the box, it backs up files in your Desktop, Documents, Movies, and Pictures folders. It also backs up contacts, notes, and files with sensitive content wherever they may be. And it syncs local files with the backup every day. If you’ve trained your employees to keep work documents in the appropriate folders, this default backup behavior should protect against disaster.

Simple Password Manager

When you install the Norton suite, you also get Norton Password Manager. This isn't precisely a bonus since you can get Norton Password Manager for free, but it's nice to have it integrated into My Norton. Read our review of the standalone app for full details.

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Norton Password Manager handles basic password management tasks such as password capture, password replay, and web form filling. It can sync across all your Windows, Android, and iOS devices. It includes an actionable password strength report, but it lacks advanced features, such as secure password sharing, digital inheritance, and multi-factor authentication.

Features Shared With Norton’s Consumer Suites

Norton’s business suite shared some features with the consumer-side suite line that starts with Norton 360, but it’s not a total match. Some of those features just make more sense in a product aimed at the consumer.

Both suites include a menu item titled Privacy, not found in the standalone antivirus. On the page devoted to privacy, both include panels for VPN and webcam protection. Norton 360 adds a panel for Privacy Monitor, which handles personal data removal. Norton 360 also includes an Identity item in the menu, which provides access to the dark web monitoring system. This is not the full identity theft remediation you get by upgrading to Norton 360 With LifeLock; it just reports data breaches that may have included your personal data.

Norton's VPN

Where an antivirus protects your documents and data on your computer, a VPN protects your data as it traverses the internet. From your computer to the VPN server, the communication pipeline is totally encrypted. Nobody can snoop your communications or tweak the data being sent, not even if you’re connected to a hotspot owned by a hacker gang. The fact that your web traffic seems to come from the VPN server means websites you visit can’t geolocate you, and it can also let you access region-locked content.

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If you simply flip the on switch, Norton’s VPN immediately starts protecting your web traffic, using the server that Norton determined has the best connection. You can dig into the list of 30-odd countries and choose where you’d like to connect. Do note that the number of server locations available is well below average. The VPN offers useful features, including split tunneling and a kill switch, and you can set it to connect automatically in specific situations.

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We’ve covered the VPN’s features in detail as part of our review of Norton VPN Ultimate, which combines the VPN with the equivalent of Norton 360’s security features, so read that review for a deep dive into its features and drawbacks. Norton's VPN isn't one of our Editors' Choice picks; those go to Proton VPN and NordVPN. But if you're buying a security suite for your small business, it's better to use the VPN you have than spend more money for another one, especially since you can manage it right along with the rest of your business's security.

Webcam and Microphone Protection

When you activate your webcam for a video call, it typically reflects its active status with a little light. However, malware can activate the camera without that tell-tale light. Next time you’re changing clothes in front of your laptop, consider shielding the camera.

Having a pervy peeper watching you in your underwear isn’t great, but abuse of the webcam in a business setting could be worse. Imagine if a malefactor tapped into a computer microphone to listen in on your top-secret strategy meeting.

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In its default Smart Mode, Norton’s SafeCam system allows known and trusted apps to use your webcam and microphone. If an unknown app attempts access, you get a warning and a chance to block that access. You can also just block all access when you won’t be using the cam or mic. Or you can set Strict Mode, which bypasses the check for known and trusted apps, only allowing those you have personally approved.

Additional Norton Applications

Your Norton Small Business Premium subscription has some bonus apps not found in all the consumer-facing Norton suites. Log in to the My Norton dashboard to install Norton Utilities Ultimate and Norton Driver Updater. But remember that for most of your installations, the user is one of your employees. Do you really want or need them to have these utilities available? Consider reserving them for the devices that you use personally.

Norton Utilities Ultimate

The IBM PC had barely hit store shelves when the first Norton Utilities box appeared. The modern Norton Utilities Ultimate bears little resemblance to that ancient collection of DOS utilities, but it still aims to clean up and speed up your PC, with a few bonus utilities to solve common problems.

The File Cleanup built into the Norton suite handles deleting junk files and browser detritus. Norton Utilities does the same, but with a greater breadth of coverage and detailed control. It also identifies and removes broken Registry entries. These actions are standard for a cleanup component in a suite.

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More unusual is the Cloud Cleaner system, which reaches into your Google Drive and OneDrive accounts and helps you clean those up. To use this cleaner, you must log in to the account in question and give Cloud Cleaner access. The scan finds such things as duplicate files, super-large files, or files you haven’t touched for a year or more.

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Data Recovery and Data Shredder make a natural pair. With Data Recovery, you scan a specified disk or folder for remnants of deleted files and, if you’re lucky, retrieve that lost file. Put a file through Data Shredder, though, and you ensure that it can’t be recovered by anyone.

This utility strongly emphasizes uninstalling programs. Under Manage programs, it has an uninstaller tool and an uninstall simulator. You’re meant to use the latter before uninstalling a program that might be supporting other installed apps. My own take is that you don’t want your employees uninstalling programs, with or without simulating the process.

Norton Driver Updater

The printers, webcams, and other devices attached to your PC have to work smoothly together, and drivers are the software that makes that happen. Rather than include drivers when checking for software patches, Norton has a separate utility to keep drivers up to date. Just download it from the Norton dashboard online and run a quick scan.

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If the scan shows an out-of-date driver, you can dig in for details and click a button to apply the available update. Always having the latest drivers is a good thing, but I’m not sure why Norton needs a separate app to do that chore.

Security Features Focused on Business

Most of the security services and features I’ve described so far can also be found in Norton’s consumer-side suites. However, like other small business suites, Norton includes some components that are business-only and some that are just better in a business setting.

Limited Remote Management

From the online dashboard, you can review the status of all the devices associated with your Norton business subscription. In most cases, you’ll see a checkmark in a green circle with the legend Protected. If there’s something wrong with the configuration, perhaps because an employee turned off protection, the dashboard reflects that problem. For PCs, a Fix Now button lets you correct the configuration remotely. If the offending device is a Mac, Norton advises going to the device and correcting its settings.

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Correcting reported problems is as far as Norton’s remote management goes, though. Bitdefender takes the concept further, with a collection of remote actions that vary depending on the device. For a PC, Mac, or Android device, you can launch a malware scan; PCs also let you remotely optimize the device or check for vulnerabilities.

Business Identity Protection

If a business that holds your personal information gets compromised, you may be exposed to a data breach. But if your company is compromised, you might wind up being responsible for a breach. By monitoring the dark web for the presence of your business details, you can at least have the earliest possible warning that a breach may be pending.

It’s true that Norton can monitor for the presence of basic data items like the email you used to create your account out of the box. However, to really use this feature, you need to flesh out the data collection for tracking. To start, select Business Identity Protection from the online dashboard.

Here, you’ll find the option to record a collection of company-specific information, such as the company name, employer ID, and domain name, plus more esoteric items such as the DUNS number and Creditsafe number.

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In addition to the business-specific items for tracking, you can also monitor the same personal data that Norton’s consumer-side suites support:

• Address (5)
• Bank Account (10)
• Credit Card (10)
• Driver’s License (1)
• Email (5)
• Gamer Tag (10)
• Insurance (5)
• Mother’s Maiden Name (1)
• Passport (4)
• Phone (5)

Some of these, like driver’s license and mother’s maiden name, don’t carry over to a business account. But your business surely has one or more addresses, credit cards, bank accounts, and so on. The Business Assets Exposure Scan that comes with Bitdefender works in much the same way.

Financial Monitoring

Financial monitoring works much the same way it does in Norton 360 With LifeLock. You give the service full access to your bank or credit card account. Now, you can get an alert whenever the account has a withdrawal, purchase, or transfer exceeding a user-defined threshold, $500 by default. Norton also scans for recurring transactions and alerts you to unexpected changes.

Social Media Monitoring

These days, social media plays a big part in getting your small business known. Some small companies don’t even set up a website, preferring to base their online presence on a Facebook page or similar. You may assign an employee or small team to manage your social media presence, or you may handle it yourself. Whoever handles social media, a security breach or misuse of the account can be embarrassing for the business.

Norton can monitor your company’s Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube accounts. It will notify you if it detects suspicious changes to settings or if unwanted content, such as hate speech or self-harm, appears in the social feed.

Business Tech Support

If you encounter a problem with the antivirus or other Norton component, you can get all the tech support you need to solve the problem. As noted earlier, if Norton lets a brand-new Trojan or other malware slip past, the virus protection promise means that skilled support agents will investigate remotely and either clean up the problem or refund your subscription.

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Of course, plenty of other problems would merit a call to the IT department if you had one. Your Norton subscription includes help for various third-party issues, including software installations, operating system updates, network setup, and more. You can call on Norton’s Business Tech Support team for IT support to solve five problems a year. It’s a nice bonus. And hey, if the year is ending and you haven’t used your support tickets, consider calling on the team to tune up performance for your most essential computers.