In addition to Norton Personal Firewall, Norton Internet Security 2002 includes our Editors' Choice–winning Norton AntiVirus, Parental Control, and Privacy Control in a $69.95 suite. All of the included programs work from the same well-designed interface, giving you control over everything you see, send, or receive on your computers.

Installation is quick and simple—even for beginners. After you install the firewall, a wizard guides you through the basics of firewall setup. The whole process takes 15 to 30 minutes, depending on your familiarity with firewalls. The default settings, aimed at avoiding too-frequent alerts, are somewhat permissive. If you insist on tight control over cookies or applications, plan on investing some time in fine-tuning the system.

To customize security settings, you should first run a system scan, which compiles a handy list of every Internet-accessing application on your system. You then set permissions individually or accept Norton's defaults. The scan's speed and convenience are great, but its interface is not quite up to the excellent level of the rest of the Norton suite's UI. You select from one of four choices for each app: Automatic, Permit all, Block all, and Custom. There's no choice for Ask Each Time. You initiate security scans through the program interface, but they run on Norton's site (unlike McAfee, which runs scans locally).

The firewall detects and blocks port scans and logs intrusion attempts. In our testing, it detected port scans even at its lowest security level. It doesn't run a trace on suspected hackers, though, as BlackICE Defender and others in this roundup do. Symantec, however, is planning an online tool for tracing attacks, which should be available by the time you read this. To guard against viruses' impersonating legitimate programs, Norton creates digital fingerprints for known programs and makes updated lists available for download every two weeks.

You can choose the level of alerts, ranging from only the most severe cases to every time a Web site attempts to create a cookie in your machine. Alert windows slide out from a panel on the right-hand side and aren't too disruptive. On-screen warnings about suspicious activity are sometimes too cryptic and should provide more information. The program's logs detail the number of attempted intrusions but not the security risks. You also get free updates for one year; after that, they're $6.95 per year.

The suite's filtering feature blocks specific URLs, which isn't the best approach. It should combine this method with content filtering. Parents have the option to unblock any controlled URLs. The suite's ad-blocking software is excellent, greatly speeding page-load times. It even blocks some pop-up windows, depending on how they're generated.