Panda Cloud Antivirus

WinDefend, our newest Junior Moderator has posted a giveaway of 2-year PRO License Keys for 5 lucky users after we hit our 20.000 fan mark at our facebook page over at www.facebook.com/cloudantivirus.

Check it out:
http://www.cloudantivirus.com/forum/thread.jspa?threadID=62106&tstart=0

AV-Test.org has just released the September & October test results of its Full Product Monthly tests. More information at http://www.av-test.org/en/tests/test-reports/. This is the second batch of test reports in which Panda participates with Panda Cloud Antivirus FREE Edition.

Of course we are happy to see that Panda Cloud Antivirus FREE Edition has achieved certification with some good scores. But I would like to focus this post on the performance part of the test, which is where Panda Cloud Antivirus FREE Edition has really shined. Of course an AV product needs to detect as much malware as possible with as little false positives as possible. But nowadays the top AV products are very aligned in both these respects. So what is it that makes the difference then when choosing an AV? Many people will say its the performance and how it behaves on your individual system. Will it slow you down? Will it consume too much memory or CPU cycles? How will it impact your system? Many times a big performance hit will make the best of AVs with the highest detection rates and lowest FPs useless if they don’t allow the user to work with his or her PC.

There are some (not many) AV performance tests out there. Unfortunately most of the are sponsored by such or such vendor, which is not ideal as the vendor pays for the test and therefore choose what the test should look at, which coincidentally will be the performance areas the sponsoring vendor is good at, instead of looking at the overall performance hit. The Passmark tests sponsored by Symantec are a good example of this. Eugene has a good criticism of these type of sponsored tests (google it). Luckly the AV-Test performance review looks at the overall performance hit and this is where the architectural design of CloudAV really shows how it improves performance over traditional AV:

AV-Test.org September/October 2011 Full Product Test Reports available at http://www.av-test.org/en/tests/test-reports/

If you haven’t seen it already, Panda Cloud Antivirus cloud-scanning backend, Collective Intelligence, has reached its 200 millionth file analyzed in the last few hours.

Being one of the first cloud-scanning backends in the AV industry, Panda’s Collective Intelligence processes automatically over 250.000 new files every day. It is able to automatically analyze new files, determine if they are malicious or not, create signatures for the malicious ones and respond to threats on user’s PC’s in real-time without requiring AV signature updates. In addition it also is able to create heuristic determinations for completely new and unknown malware which it has never seen before without actually having the file, as well as using prevalence to make determinations and prioritizations, making Panda’s Collective Intelligence the most advanced cloud-scanning technology in the market.

More information:
http://www.cloudantivirus.com/en/threat-information/
http://press.pandasecurity.com/usa/news/panda-security-processes-200-millionth-malware-file-via-the-cloud/

Hot off the trails of the great debut of Panda Cloud Antivirus at AV-Comparatives with an Advanced+ rating, now Panda Cloud Antivirus Free Edition is also taking part of the Full Product / Real-World tests of AV-Test.org.

The results are pretty good. Both Panda Cloud Antivirus Free Edition and Panda Internet Security 2012 achieved some of the top scores in protection. In addition Panda Cloud Antivirus achieved very good scores for usability, with very little slowdown of the test computers and zero false positives (when the industry average for this test was 17 false positives).

The full reports can be read online for both Panda Cloud Antivirus Free Edition and Panda Internet Security 2012.

AV-Comparatives.org just published its latest detection test. This test takes into consideration detection of recent malware as well as false positives. This is the first time that Panda Cloud Antivirus Free Edition participates in AV-Comparatives.org independent tests.

We’re happy to announce that the results couldn’t be much better. Panda Cloud Antivirus Free Edition achieved the highest rating (Advanced+) by being one of the AVs with the highest detection and lowest false positive ratings of the 20 products tested. Panda Cloud Antivirus Free Edition even got higher scores both in detection and false positives than paid-for security solutions from Kasperspky, ESET, McAfee, Trend Micro and Symantec and also higher scores than other free solutions by Avast and AVG.

You can read the full report at AV-Comparatives.org testing site.

Finally the new Panda Cloud Antivirus beta is here, getting us closer and closer to the expected Panda Cloud Antivirus 2.0 release. Version 1.9.1 incorporates a full fledged firewall with application and system rules. This new firewall and its settings is available from a new tab off the main GUI.

The full firewall included in this beta version is a smart community-based firewall which will automatically assign inbound and outbound communication privileges to processes. The automatic assignment is performed depending on its risk assessment as well as the direction of the communication which is being initiated. So if an OUTBOUND connection is being made by a Secure or Low Risk process, the process is allowed to communicate automatically. Alternatively if a process is deemed riskier, a prompt will ask the user to choose whether to allow or block the communication. A similar although stricter approach is used for INBOUND connections.

The risk assessment of executed processes is shown in the Process Monitor window of the main GUI as shown in the first picture of this blog post. This is calculated automatically based on many different conditions, such as safe lists, digital signatures, telemetry and prevalence, automated analysis of processes, etc.

However users can also manually manage the firewall rules by adding new ones, editing, deleting, importing and exporting rules and prioritizing certain rules over others. This is easily done from the Program Control window under the firewall tab of the main GUI as shown in the next picture.

Finally there’s also a lot of improvements in the antivirus part of the program, as always targeted at making Panda Cloud Antivirus even lighter and faster, as well as a usual batch of bug fixes. The full changelog can be seen below.

NOTE: if your Panda Cloud Antivirus has upgraded successfully to version 1.5.1 and you are getting constant notifications on the traybar about the upgrade, please reboot your computer to finish the upgrade and these notifications will stop.

We are happy to announce the availability of Panda Cloud Antivirus version 1.5.1. If you are reading this after seeing a “Panda Cloud Antivirus has upgraded automatically!” message on your Desktop traybar, then you already have this latest version installed and running. If you don’t have version 1.5.1 yet don’t worry. As we are releasing the automatic and transparent upgrade little by little in a few days your copy of Panda Cloud Antivirus will upgrade itself automatically.

Version 1.5.1 is a maintenance upgrade from version 1.5.0 which fixes some bugs reported by the user community. The bug fixes included are the following:

• Fixed problems disinfecting Google Chrome cookies.
• Fixed problems disinfecting certain compressed malware.
• Fixed Blue Screen of Death problem after upgrading or installing version 1.5.
• Fixed bug which prevented re-enabling autorun.
• Fixed errors when redirecting to webpages from the “I like CloudAV” window.
• Security Toolbar and URL Filter version 2.0.0.17 with Firefox 5.0 compatibility.

Remember that if you have any problems whatsoever with Panda Cloud Antivirus you can always ask for help at our Technical Support Forum.

Also if you like Panda Cloud Antivirus don’t forget to help us grow the community of  users. The more we are, the better protection we get. Make sure to click on the “I like CloudAV” button on the main window to easily protect your community of friends and family by letting them know about Panda Cloud Antivirus.

Softpedia just published a review of Panda Cloud Antivirus 1.5 and has awarded its “excellent 5-star” rating. The review highlights Cloud Antivirus automatic and transparent upgrades, the improvements in system resource usage, scan speed and improved malware detection rates.

The review concludes that “Panda Cloud Antivirus is indeed easy to use, very light on system resources and manages to offer protection a

gainst all sorts of malware. Despite being a free product it manages to provide a lot more than just basic protection.”

The full review can be read here:
http://www.softpedia.com/reviews/windows/Panda-Cloud-Antivirus-Free-Edition-Review-207624.shtml

Shadowman, one of our technical support forum moderators, has created a contest called “Summer Picture with Cloud Antivirus“.

Basically the five most creative users will get a 3-year license for Panda Cloud Antivirus PRO. The contest runs from July 1st to August 31st, 2011, so make sure to read up on the rules and dust off your nice camera.

We are happy to announce the availability of Panda Cloud Antivirus version 1.5. If you are reading this after seeing a “Panda Cloud Antivirus has upgraded automatically!” message on your Desktop traybar, then you already have this latest version installed and running. If you don’t have version 1.5 installed yet don’t worry. As we are releasing the automatic and transparent upgrade little by little in a few days your copy of Panda Cloud Antivirus will upgrade itself automatically.

This keyword of this release is improved performance. In addition new features suggested by the user community have been added as well.

• Scanning speeds have been improved dramatically.
• CPU consumption has been reduced thanks to improvements in the BackgroundScan.
• New graphical installer.
• Ability to close the banner.
• New advanced configuration options for exclusions of files by extension, Potentially Unwanted Programs and more.
• Activity monitor shows scanned files and last virus detected.
• Report now includes entries for Collective Intelligence cache synchronizations.

In addition there are a lot of bug fixes, most notably:

• Fixed error when trying to open Panda Cloud Antivirus right after install.
• Fixed problems registering with Windows Security Center.
• Fixed access violation in PSUNSuspects.dll when opening console.
• Fixed protected Lost&Found directory privileges which prevented restoration of files.
• Fixed Error Code 11 when trying to undo an exclusion for a file which has been deleted from the drive.
• Fixed Error Code 11 when trying to insert into the Recycle Bin a file which was also excluded from the scan.
• Fixed error which prevented opening the GUI and showing the traybar icon.

Don’t forget to help us grow the community of Panda Cloud Antivirus users. The more we are, the better protection it provides. Now there’s a “I like CloudAV” button on the main window to easily protect your community of friends and family.