Security solutions are keeping up with the trend and are also embracing the Cloud, with Panda Cloud Antivirus an illustrative example in this context. The software outfit applauded what it referred to as an industry's first, a Cloud-based antivirus thin-client. Fact is that the Panda Cloud Antivirus functions on the principles of Software plus Services. End users still have to install a client locally on their machines, but the client itself is merely one component of the security offering. The other is hosted in Panda's datacenters, namely in the Cloud.

“We truly believe that Panda Cloud Antivirus represents a quantum leap in protection over the traditional approach to antivirus architecture,” revealed 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.”

Panda Cloud Antivirus debuted into Beta on April 28, 2009, and is currently available for download. The security solution is designed as a combination of a thin-client agent and server architecture working in tandem. Panda claims that moving away from traditional signature-based exclusively on-premise products into the Cloud is a step that deliver 50% less impact on end users' machines. With Panda Cloud Antivirus the malware scanning and determination process have been migrated off of the desktops and into the Cloud.

End users are still getting a variety of protection layers, including local and remote antivirus solutions, antispyware, antirootkit, heuristics technology for new malware and even goodware cache. But Panda Cloud Antivirus relies most heavily on on-access asynchronous cloud-scanning. At the basis of the real-time cloud-scanning is the Panda Collective Intelligence, a technology set up to harvest information from all users running Panda security solutions. Panda promises that potential malicious code gets classified as such in under six minutes, almost instantaneously.

Panda Cloud Antivirus is available for download here.