A recent study has shown that modern antivirus pieces of software successfully protect computers in less that 50% of virus attacks. This concept is what has pushed industry veterans like Oliver Friedrichs (former Director at Symantec) and Alfred Huger (former McAfee and Symantec executive) to form a new company that deals with present-day threats in a new and improved way. The two have founded the Immunet Corporation, which has recently launched its first product, Immunet Protect, a cloud-based antivirus.

After the first attempt in community security by Prevx, with a concept that revolved around the collaboration between computers after detecting a system intrusion, Immunet takes the recent advances in cloud computing inside the software security field. Immunet Protect was launched as the advanced and powerful community cloud-based antivirus, focused on supplying security not only to a single computer, but to the entire cloud.

The simplest explanation of this concept can be found in the official Immunet Protect press release: “Immunet leverages the computers of your friends, family and a worldwide global community to harness their collective security. Every time someone in this collective community encounters a threat, everyone else in the community gains protection from that same threat in real time.”

Immunet Protect will take full advantage of the Internet itself, offering a way to fight back against dangerous online threats. The community's cloud will record every attack, users sharing experiences on how to block threats, while not having to wait around for hours until a classic antivirus updates its thousands of files for a more secure version. This takes the security concept out of the user's home and places it on the web and in the community.

“Immunet Protect provides protection by harnessing the collective wisdom of the security products that you already run, as well as knowledge on the applications installed across Immunet's entire user population.”

From all security AV giants, Panda is the only one competing on the same level with Immunet, with its own version of a community-based product: Panda Cloud Antivirus.

For now, Immunet Protect is only available for the Windows platform, being offered as a free download and installation on the company's website.

A Softpedia secure download link can be found here.