Panda Cloud Antivirus: Let your viruses suffer the wrath of the cloud
Among the latest to move up to that better place on the clouds is the Antivirus. With the release of Panda Cloud Antivirus 1.0 one of the most essential aspects of computer security for Windows computers, the antivirus, has now shifted to the clouds.
The Panda Cloud Antivirus adopts the thin-client model for its antivirus agent, meaning that most of the hard parts in virus detection are delegated to the cloud. The antivirus client works with the Panda Collective Intelligence service.
The Panda Collective Intelligence is the online system which powers the antivirus, and it essentially “automates” all the tasks involved in malware detection, from collecting samples and identifying new viruses to actually making the “disinfection routines” and sending them to the clients. Not only does this mean that you are always using the latest definitions, but also that you no longer need to store them on your computer, and can thus save on memory.
The automated system also speeds up the process of detecting new threats and coming up with solutions, which they claim is as short as 6 minutes! It is new threats which are more damaging as fewer people are protected against them, and by decreasing the time taken for the diagnosis of new threats Panda Cloud Antivirus can potentially nip new threats in the bud.
Best of all, the antivirus and service are both free! The antivirus can be downloaded from the Panda Cloud Antivirus website, and is a mere 22M download. It installs in less than a minute, and requires only that you create an free account to which it associates itself. The account itself needs just your email address and a password, and you are good to go, just a few minutes your computer is protected from viruses with all the might of the cloud.
For Indian users though, bandwidth is always a concern, and with download caps and fickle connections, leaving one of the most important aspects of your computers protection to one of the least reliable aspects of your computer might not be the wisest thing to do. While it supposedly only a few hundred kB daily for its purposes, you might just be more comfortable with an offline solution for now. Yet, Panda is a peek into what might be to come in the field of antivirus protection, and if the model is indeed successful, we might just see such solutions from others as well.
Get Panda Cloud Antivirus for free from here.