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 the 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 your computer programs. 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.