14 DAY TRIAL // Introduced at the end of April 2009, the free Panda Cloud antivirus will be tailored for Windows 7 and x64 platforms in Beta 3, a release that the security company promises will be readied by September of this year. For the time being, Panda has made available the second Beta of its free Cloud-based antivirus, kicking the security solution up a notch. According to Panda's senior research advisor, Pedro Bustamante, the focus with the latest development milestone of Panda Cloud Antivirus was the detection and disinfection capabilities. In this respect, the security outfit indicated that it worked to integrate feedback from testers, after millions of downloads of the Beta 1 release.
One example of the evolution from Beta 1 to Beta 2 is the increased flexibility that end users have when it comes to recovering files flagged as malware by the antivirus and deleted automatically. Bustamante explained that Beta 2 added a new “Undo” option for the Recycle Bin. In the eventuality that Panda Cloud Antivirus will delete a genuine file in a false positive scenario, users have the option to easily undo the effect for a limited period of time, which can be configured.
“Under some circumstances files being executed (directly from Internet download, from a read-only network share, etc.) were checked asynchronously against the cloud after the file was loaded into memory. This resulted in detection+disinfection actions to be taken after infection. With Beta2 we changed this behaviour to block the execution until a response has been received by Collective Intelligence. In the event that it is malware, the file will be deleted prior to allowing it to execute,” Bustamante added.
In a move designed to add extra protection to end users, programs that are being executed without a response from Collective Intelligence, a technology capable of centralizing malware information from the global network of Panda security solutions, will be time out for 30 seconds. If within 30 seconds CI provides no data the program will be allowed to execute and scan asynchronously. However, due to no less than 10 sensors throughout America, Europe and Asia, Panda estimates that 98.41% of the CI queries take less than 3 seconds.
“Right after installation Panda Cloud Antivirus launches a BackgroundScan of the entire PC to ensure it is clean. Some users reported that launching an On-Demand scan of the entire PC right after install slowed down the PC and/or caused the scan to take a long time. This bug was due to both the BackgroundScan and OnDemandScan running simultaneously. With Beta2 this is fixed by having the BackgroundScan automatically pause in case it detects an OnDemandScan being launched. Once the OnDemandScan is finished, the BackgroundScan will resume where it left off,” Bustamante added.
Panda Cloud Antivirus is available for download here.