Symantec is working on the next iteration of Norton Internet Security, NIS 2009, with the mantra of what it’s calling Zero Impact Performance: “Security so light and fast you never even know it’s there — until you need it.”

There are more than 300 major overhauls that the company asserts will affect almost every aspect of the security suite, from scanning engines to user interface. Symantec says that NIS 2009, released to public beta on July 14 and due to ship in the fall, will include the industry’s fastest protection updates, half the memory usage of its next-most-memory-stingy competitor (Bit Defender IS 08) and a blink-of-an-eye install time of one minute.

Symantec says that underpowered systems with pre-existing performance problems are the root cause of the majority of complaints it receives in its support center every month. A Symantec representative stated that of some 1 million people who contact Norton technical support monthly, 40% are running PCs with 512MB or less of RAM and 75% memory utilization, and another 31% are running with 1GB of RAM and 57% memory utilization.

I downloaded the beta version of NIS 2009 and was impressed by the install time, but it was not one minute as Symantec claims, more like 4 minutes, but fast enough. I ran the scan which took over 2 hours on my 160 GB Hard Drive which is 44% full. The only thing that was found during the scan was tracking cookies.

NIS 2009 looks promising!

Read more about NIS 2009 here.