Panda puts antivirus scanning in the cloud

Jake Widman
Thursday, 30 April 2009 03:03

Business IT - Technology

Panda Security introduces Panda Cloud Antivirus, which relies on group knowledge to quickly identify and deal with new malware.

The new security approach, which just entered public beta, is based on a locally installed thin client that accesses cloud-based knowledge.

As described in the Panda announcement, traditional antivirus protection relies on locally installed malware signatures and extensive processing of suspect files.

Cloud Antivirus, by contrast, uses a local "thin client" to access scanning and diagnosis activities performed in the cloud.

The cloud activity is based on what Panda calls Collective Intelligence, an online database of malware signatures drawn from the activity on Panda users' machines.

The result, claims Panda, is an antivirus platform that requires only 17 MB of RAM on the local machine and has half the performance impact of the average security solution.

"Panda Cloud Antivirus offers consumers a truly install-and-forget solution that delivers the industry’s fastest protection against the newest malware with literally half the performance impact," said Panda CEO Juan Santana.

For more on the operation of Panda Cloud Antivirus, see Page 2.