NEW Panda Cloud Antivirus: The First Free Cloud-Based Antivirus

Panda Security, a leading provider of ITsecurity solutions , announced the global beta release of Panda Cloud Antivirus , the industry’s first and only free cloud-based antivirus thin-client with 50 percent less impact on PC performance compared to the industry average.

With Panda Cloud Antivirus, Panda Security is introducing a new protection model that utilizes a thin-client agent and server architecture which processes and blocks malware more efficiently than locally installed signature-based products.

By moving the entire malware scanning and determination process to the cloud and applying non-intrusive interception techniques on the client architecture, Panda Cloud Antivirus is able to provide advanced protection against new and unknown viruses with a lightweight thin-client agent that barely consumes any PC resources.

Traditional antivirus products for PCs rely on multiple locally installed technologies which intercept each file at different layers (entry vector, file system and execution) and scan them using various techniques (antivirus, heuristics, intrusion prevention, behavioral analysis, etc.).

This process results in heavy usage of local PC memory and CPU resources, negatively impacting performance. The Panda Cloud Antivirus thin-client agent introduces a new philosophy for on-access asynchronous cloud-scanning. It combines local detection technologies with real-time cloud-scanning to maximize results while minimizing resource consumption. This optimized model blocks malicious programs as they attempt to execute, while managing less dangerous operations via non-intrusive background scans.

Panda Cloud Antivirus includes local and remote antivirus, anti-spyware, anti-rootkit, heuristics and goodware cache, while only consuming an average of 17 MB of RAM and 50 percent of the PC performance impact as compared to the industry average.

Utilizing Panda’s proprietary cloud computing technology called Collective Intelligence, Panda Cloud Antivirus harnesses the knowledge of Panda’s global community of millions of users to automatically identify and classify new malware strains in almost real-time. Each new file received by Collective Intelligence is automatically classified in under six minutes.

Collective Intelligence servers automatically receive and classify over 50,000 new samples every day. In addition, Panda’s Collective Intelligence system correlates malware information data collected from each PC to continually improve protection for the community of users.

“We truly believe that Panda Cloud Antivirus represents a quantum leap in protection over the traditional approach to antivirus architecture,” said Juan Santana, CEO for Panda Security. “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. We’re excited to make it available today for free, which is Panda’s way of paying back to the community and growing our Collective Intelligence network so that we can deliver even greater protection to all customers.”

For more information or to download the free product, please visit: http://www.cloudantivirus.com

About Panda Security
Since 1990, its mission has been to analyze new threats as rapidly as possible to keep our clients safe. Several teams, each specialized in a specific type of malware (viruses, worms, Trojans, spyware, phishing, spam, etc), work 24/7 to provide global coverage.

To achieve this, they also have the support of TruPrevent® Technologies, which act as a global early-warning system made up of strategically distributed sensors to neutralize new threats and send them to PandaLabs for in-depth analysis. According to Av.Test.org, PandaLabs is currently the fastest laboratory in the industry in providing complete updates to users. More information is available in the PandaLabs blog.