– Panda Cloud Antivirus introduces radically new protection model with lightweight thin-client agent and real-time scanning-from-the-cloud

– Community-based protection system automatically classifies new malware in under six minutes with 50 percent less impact on PC performance
 

Panda Security, a leading provider of IT security solutions, today 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. Consumers can download the free product from http://www.cloudantivirus.com.

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 product, please visit: http://www.cloudantivirus.com.