Panda Cloud Antivirus Emerges From Beta

Panda Cloud Antivirus UI

I reported on Panda Cloud Antivirus back in June and July in my posts, Panda’s Cloud Antivirus (Beta) is a Winner! and Panda’s CloudAntivirus Update.

I tested Panda Cloud Antivirus extensively on my systems while it was in beta and only recently switched to Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) for evaluation. Today, I’ll switch back to Panda on my older, slower system to compare performance of each one. I have noticed a slight performance degradation with MSE that was all but non-existent with Panda. Now that Panda Cloud Antivirus is out of beta, I can make a fair comparison which I will report on later. In the meantime, here’s some info from Panda’s press release I received this morning

Panda Cloud Antivirus, the industry’s first and most comprehensive free cloud-based anti-virus that protects consumers PCs against the latest malware, spyware, rootkits and viruses, today emerged from beta after six months of user testing. To experience the expanded performance and support capabilities of Cloud Antivirus, as well as benefit from both online and offline security protection, consumers can download the free service from Panda Security at http://www.cloudantivirus.com.

Recognized for being “the first anti-virus without an update button”, Panda Cloud Antivirus delivers the fastest protection against the newest and most dangerous viruses. This is made possible thanks to Collective Intelligence, Panda’s advanced system that gathers malware information from its global community of users in the cloud to automatically identify and classify new malware strains in minutes. Collective Intelligence combines local detection technologies with real-time cloud-scanning to maximize protection while minimizing resource consumption. Available in 11 languages, Panda Cloud Antivirus works under Windows XP (32 bits), Windows Vista (32bits and 64bits) and Windows 7 (32bits and 64bits) operating systems and only consumes 20 MB of RAM.

It’s an interesting technology and one that I think we’ll see more of in the future. As more users join the collective, the application gets even more sensitive to new malware strains. A PC World review found Cloud Antivirus impressive:

“Among all of the free anti-virus software we tested for our latest roundup, Panda Cloud Antivirus was the best app at blocking known malware. The approach is intended to take advantage of the latest signatures without the need for signature-database updates–and if its excellent showing at detecting malware in AV-Test.org’s zoo of half a million samples is any indication, the approach works. Panda’s app produced an impressive 99.4 percent overall detection rate.”

Let me know if you try it and how you like it.

Panda’s Cloud Antivirus (Beta) is a Winner!

I’ve been using Panda Security’s free Cloud Antivirus for awhile and I must say I’m impressed. It’s there, but you’ll never know it unless you look (the little panda icon in the system tray). I rarely get malware of any kind, but Cloud AV has caught a couple of things that were probably drive-bys. It’s so transparent that I actually had to go check on it before I noticed that malware had been caught. This is a perfect set-it-and-forget-it AV for the regular user. It’s free, self-updating and doesn’t require any decisions on the part of the user. You can believe what they have to say: