Panda launches free 'cloud' antivirus scanner

After seven months in beta, Panda Security has released the first version of its cloud-based antivirus product, which will be free to consumers with a paid-for managed service for SMBs.

Cloud Antivirus 1.0 works differently to a conventional signature scanner, a type of product the company will continue to sell from its main website. Offering no-cost downloads from a dedicated website, the new software holds a minimum number of signatures locally, relying instead on fingerprinting the system for known good programs while comparing newly encountered ones against an online 'cloud' database accessing the company's Collective Intelligence servers.

According to the company, the overwhelming majority of the 150,000 new files it encounters every day are automatically profiled, leaving only 0.6% that require manual analysis by experts. The thin client approach of Cloud Antivirus was necessary, the company said, because 50% of the malware it was encountering on any day had a life expectancy of less than 24 hours. Static signature scanners could no longer cope with such a rate of evolution.

As well as reducing the load on the local PC to as little as 3% overhead, the cloud approach allowed Panda to use the malware being detected by the company and its user base in real time to give all customers dynamic protection, the company said.

"From our perspective, cloud scanning is going to be the future," said Panda Security's senior research advisor, Pedro Bustamante. "We are switching from selling boxes to selling services."

Collective Intelligence will also lie at the core of the SMB offering, Cloud Protection, which mixes, web and email filtering with a remote firewall service designed to be centrally managed using third-party service providers. The service will also include a vulnerability element that makes possible managed patching.

Panda Cloud Antivirus for consumers can be downloaded from the company's website, compatible with XP, Vista 23/64-bit and Windows 7 32/64-bit.