Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office is a collection of cybersecurity services for home professionals looking for a solution against data loss and cyberattacks.
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Norton
Score 8.1 out of 10
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The Norton products, including Norton 360, Norton Antivirus, and Norton Security, are consumer antivirus and privacy protection products, and are now a product line of NortonLifeLock (formerly Symantec) after the enterprise security division of Symantec was acquired and is now part of Broadcom.
The imaging capability seems to be solid [with Acronis True Image], although I have not had to recover a drive yet so cannot compare. The logs tell me when it is (and isn't) working. The "Cloud Replication" that is supposed to simultaneously replicate the local backup image is perfectly awful and the months of tech support ended with them telling me I had a "VSS issue" on a brand new workstation and that I should just create a separate cloud image. After months of it taking 3-4 DAYS to run, IF it worked, and then failing altogether, I discontinued it. It was even logging (running?) under another separate critical files backup, and forced to use the same encryption password. Setting up a new one failed. The cloud backup of my critical files is still running at kb/sec speeds. The ransomware protection hasn't caught anything yet to my knowledge, and consumes a lot of resources. Changing the settings takes at least 10 minutes to log into the cloud. Cloud storage is tiny and a push to get you to pay more. Will not be renewing.
For a stand-alone business this should do the trick, but if using across multiple clients (multi-tenancy not an option). Default settings within the program will cause performance issues if not tweaked, meaning someone with networking experience may be necessary. Not ideal for MSP's unless they only have a few clients, as the manageability must be done within "the walls" of each company.
Some features have actually become more complicated over the years. One that comes to mind is creating a backup plan that can execute daily to an external USB media that is changed daily (older versions would back up to the, for example, "F" drive regardless of which drive was attached - newer versions identify each drive uniquely, and a backup task created with a given external drive will fail due to the lack of media presence if the drive is replaced).
Error messages could be less cryptic.
Support turnaround time and live assistance could be faster.
I did renew it before because support is great and cost is great. I believe that Norton has a very long experience in what they do and they are doing a great job with all the updates they provide and the work they are doing. Moreover Norton is going in the right direction for sure.
Beyond a single instance, I haven't had to approach Acronis' support. I needed a new key following the death of my previous workstation, and they rapidly supplied it. I've heard from colleagues that they've quickly answered any questions that've been asked. If I need something, I'll generally frequent FAQ pages first, although Acronis actually has instructional videos to help users get started, which is forward-thinking. Great software that fills a vital niche for Windows systems.
Acronis True Image is the perfect program when it comes to backing up data. It supports all kinds of backup like file and/or folder backup and has a better and easier to use interface than the 2 products. I also like that I have the option to backup data in local drives also instead of the cloud only. And lastly, it supports Partition backup also instead of only files and/or folders.
User-friendly interface (it's not just AV and users who were interacting with the product), performance, resource usage (most of the computers were not very fresh and that factor was very critical), efficiency, it shouldn't be just sitting on a PC - it should protect it, what was perfectly done with that product.
The Windows version is generally reliable and only ran into one issue thus far. Restores are easy and there are many features. On MacOS, it's a completely different story. There is significant resource leakage related to the updater app that can bog down part of a CPU core continuously until it is disabled. The mobile backup feature also needs to be disabled via UNIX command line or CPU usage will go up when a mobile device on the same network like an iPad or iPhone's screen is turned on.
Poor performance against Spyware and other threats despite claiming to act against them (recognizes very few and eliminates less) It is limited to viruses.
Regular blocking of incoming scripts (in front of other antivirus)
Little or almost no compatibility with the Windows XP Firewall, but they are involved.
