Panda Cloud Antivirus

We’re happy to announce that Panda Cloud Antivirus (both Free and PRO) are available for users of Toshiba AppStore over at http://apps.toshiba.com

The Toshiba AppStore is filled with very cool cloud-based applications made available to millions of Toshiba laptop users. They can now choose to install Panda Cloud Antivirus Free Edition or even subscribe on a monthly billing basis to Panda Cloud Antivirus PRO.

As you can imagine the entire Panda Cloud Antivirus team is very excited about the news!

Great news from our marketing team: buy Panda Cloud Antivirus Pro before November 26th 2010 and enter a chance to win a brand new iPad. We will be raffling the iPad between everybody who buys Panda Cloud Antivirus PRO from today November 4th until November 26th at 24:00 CET. In order to enter simly visit our store and complete a purchase. If you already have Cloud Antivirus PRO, buy more licenses for family and friends and you’ll have more chances of winning the iPad.

We are happy to announce that we just released Panda Cloud Antivirus version 1.3. This new version of Panda Cloud Antivirus has been made possible thanks to our large community of users and specially to our Support Forum Trusted Mods who have helped a lot of users and gathered enough feedback to incorporate major improvements as well as many different bug fixes. All new features have been included in both the Free and Pro Edition.

If you have Panda Cloud Antivirus 1.1.0, 1.1.1 or 1.1.2, you will get the upgrade automatically and transparently over the course of the next few days (see below for details). If you don’t have Panda Cloud Antivirus installed yet you can download it from www.cloudantivirus.com.

The main new features and fixes included in Panda Cloud Antivirus 1.3 are the following:

• Malicious Web & URL Filtering. This feature blocks websites that push malware, exploits and drive-by downloads. It is available both in Free and in Pro Editions and is installed by the toolbar. Unlike similar solutions, this web filtering works at a low level so it works under all browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, etc. For those of you that didn’t install the toolbar but would like to install the Web & URL Filtering, you can download it from here and install it manually.
• Unified Recycle Bin and Quarantine. Previously the Recycle Bin handled suspicious detections and the Quarantine handled deleted malware detections. This has been unified into a new Recycle Bin for ease of management. This is included in both Free and Pro Editions.
• Automatic and transparent upgrades to new product versions, previously only available in the Pro Edition, this is now available in the Free Edition as well. All users of Free Editions versions 1.1.0, 1.1.1 and 1.1.2 will automatically and transparently upgrade to the new 1.3. See notes below for the upgrade schedule.
• No more nagging advertising. After listening to many of you we have decided to turn off the nagging advertising popups prompting to upgrade to Pro Edition. If you want to support Panda Cloud Antivirus and wish to get the Pro Edition, you can do so from here, but we won’t bug you anymore from the popups.
• Hot updating of behavioural blocking rules. In order to increase protection on the fly against new vulnerabilities and attacks and to fix false positives, hot updating of behavioural blocking rules allows faster response time in both the Free and Pro Editions.
• Immediate notifications of virus detections. Previously if Panda Cloud Antivirus encountered multiple viruses, it would delay its traybar notification and show them grouped. This behaviour has been changed so that the notifications are shown immediately.
• Suspicious detection counter. Under the statistics window there’s some new counters for the different types of heuristics and behavioural detections.
• New versioning format. Unified versioning format in GUI and other parts of the program.
• Many bugfixes as reported by users in our support forum:
  – Fixed issue with Windows 7 Start menu slow-down.
  – Fixed Panda traybar icon disappearing.
  – Fixed “you are not connected to the Internet” message when there is connection.
  – Fixed issue when Free Edition users can activate behavioural analysis.
  – Fixed slow-down and conflicts while playing Allods Online and AION.
  – Fixed cloud-response time configuration which defaults to 30 seconds.
  – Fixed constant accesses to the floppy disk drive.
  – Fixed BSOD issue after install.
  – Fixed bug while exporting an empty report to TXT/CSV.
  – Fixed Conficker detection.
  – Fixed BSOD while compressing malicious PDFs.
  – Fixed translation errors.

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In case you still have some questions about Panda Cloud Antivirus 1.3, here are some frequently asked questions. If you don’t find an answer to your question please contact us at the support forum.

When will my Panda Cloud Antivirus upgrade itself?
The automatic and transparent upgrade to the new Panda Cloud Antivirus version 1.3 will happen progressively over the next week or two. Initially users of version 1.1.0 will be upgraded automatically and some days later users of 1.1.2. Finally users of version 1.1.1 will be upgraded automatically.

What if I don’t want to wait for the automatic upgrade?
Simply go to www.cloudantivirus.com, download the new 1.3 version and install it on top of you current one. As you run the installer, it will prompt you to unsintall your current version and, after a reboot, will install the new one. If you have any problems please contact us at the tech support forum.

My Panda Cloud Antivirus has been upgraded but I cannot see the Web & URL Filtering Toolbar
The Web & URL Filtering component is installed by the toolbar. If you don’t already have the toolbar installed (or you uninstalled it) then the automatic upgrade will not install the new toolbar (the automatic ugprade keeps the same config as you currently have). If that is the case, you can manually download and install the new Web & URL Filtering Toolbar from here.

I know I’ve installed the Web & URL Filtering Toolbar but want to “see” it in action
There is nothing visible in the toolbar like a button to “see” the Web & URL Filter. Simply make sure there is a process running on your computer called panda2_0dn.exe and you’re good to go. If you don’t see the panda2_0dn.exe process running, install the Panda Security Toolbar manually from here. You can test that the filter is working by trying to visit http://www.cloudantivirus.com/testurlfilter

How do I disable the Web & URL Filtering?
– Go to Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs and uninstall “Panda Security Toolbar URL Filtering”.
– If you only want to disable the filtering for a short time, simply kill the “panda2_0dn.exe” process.
– For those of you wanting to visit malicious pages and/or to manage potential false positives, very soon we will add an exclusion button in the blocked pages so that you can bypass the Web & URL filter.

I have and older Panda Cloud Antivirus, version 1.0.x. What should I do?
You can do one of two things:
– Wait for an automatic upgrade. We are developing an automatic upgrade for users of 1.0. It should be released in a few weeks.
– Manually upgrade to the new version 1.3. Simply download the new version from www.cloudantivirus.com and run it. It will prompt you to uninstall the previous version and, after a reboot, install the new one. If you have any problems please contact us at the tech support forum.

So what’s the difference between Free and Pro now?
You can see the feature-to-feature comparison in the following table. As you can see we have added many new things to the Free Edition to make Panda Cloud Antivirus the best free antivirus available anywhere!

It’s been a while since we posted news about reviews, awards and certifications that Panda Cloud Antivirus has obtained. Lately there have been various new reviews about it, so I wanted to point them out here:

As you may remember back when Panda Cloud Antivirus 1.0 was released it was awarded the Editor’s Choice for “Best Free Antivirus” from PCMag.com. Now with the release of version 1.1 a few months ago, PCMag.com reviewed it again, alongside Avast!, AVG and other free antivirus, and it again achieved the Editor’s Choice award for free antivirus. The full review can be seen over at http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2364844,00.asp.

Raymond.cc, the well known security expert website, reviewed cloud-based offerings from different vendors trying to answer the question of whether cloud-based antivirus products can replace traditional signature-based products. In his own words, “Currently I would only dare to say Panda Cloud Antivirus Pro is good enough to be a possible replacement for traditional signature based antivirus. The detection rate is as good as the 3 big A’s (avira, avg, avast) and also quite light on system resources. Panda Cloud Antivirus is also very easy to configure with only a few easy to understand settings.” Please read the full review over at http://www.raymond.cc/blog/archives/2010/10/12/cloud-antivirus-review-possible-replacement-for-traditional-signature-based-antivirus/

FaraVirusi recently compared Immunet and Panda Cloud Antivirus side-by-side. According to their findings, Panda Cloud Antivirus Free Edition detected 89,37% of the 4200+ recent malware samples tested while Immunet Free only 51,37%. The review can see over at http://www.faravirusi.com/2010/10/12/immunet-protect-vs-panda-cloud-antivirus-test-comparativ-al-detectiei-exclusiv-faravirusi-com/

PCSecurityLabs, the independent chinese antivirus testing lab, has recently reviewed Panda Cloud Antivirus against malware from China. It has certified Panda Cloud Antivirus for “high protection” against zero-day malware and “high protection” against recent malware. The certificate and details can be seen over at http://www.pcsecuritylabs.net/certificate/.

Lastly another interesting review of Panda Cloud Antivirus 1.1 was performed by TechGeekAndMore. After installing the product and running it for some time, the editors found out that Panda Cloud Antivirus works simply and with a small footprint. Read the review over at http://www.techgeekandmore.com/2010/09/16/panda-antivirus-review-cloud-free-paid-versions-test-recommend/

The full updated list of all reviews of Panda Cloud Antivirus can be seen at our Technical Support Forum under the Announcements section. If you know of any more reviews feel free to send me a Private Message.

We just published version 1.1.2 of Panda Cloud Antivirus. You can get it from http://www.cloudantivirus.com.

This minor release includes some basic fixes:

* Fix for error 1603 during install or upgrade from previous versions.
* Fix for behaviour blocker FPs of WMP, VLC, OpenOffice, fubar2000, etc.
* Corrections of certain string translations (italian, japanese, etc.).
* Search reset fix during installation.
* Fix for problems with outdated Silverlight installations.
* Updated traybar notifications to show that they come from PCAV.

Users of the Free Edition can upgrade to this new version by simply downloading the new installer and executing it. The installer will uninstall the previous version and install the new one after a reboot.

Users of the Pro Edition do not need to upgrade to this new version as their installation will be upgraded automatically and transparently as needed.

We published another survey to find out which AV folks were using before switching over to Panda Cloud Antivirus.

Make sure to drop by and vote. You can do so here:
http://www.cloudantivirus.com/forum/poll.jspa?pollID=50108

You will need an active account at the CloudAV Support Forum in order to vote.If you don’t have one just click on the poll and then “access to account” on the upper-right corner.

Wow, that was one nerve-breaking never ending game, but finally Spain came out victorious after a brutal gloves-off match… OLE OLE OLE OLEEE, OLEEEE, OLEEEE!!

I have received literally hundreds and hundreds of emails from people around the world for the Panda Cloud Antivirus Pro Edition give-away. Seeing how much Spain had to overcome to win the World Cup championship, we have decided to give away 100 license keys instead of the original 20 we had announced.

If you are one of the lucky 100 winners, check your email as your license key is waiting in your inbox. If you’re not one of the lucky winners but still sent an email, check your email as well for a consolation prize

Juan Santana (Panda’s CEO) and I had to watch the game faaar away from home, in Palo Alto, California. Fortunately the people here were wonderful, almost everybody cheering for Spain. Thanks Palo Alto and VIVA ESPAÑA!!!

This idea is from users over at the CloudAV Support Forum.

Basically if Spain wins the World Cup 2010, I will be giving away 20 Panda Cloud Antivirus Pro Edition license keys for free to the first 20 people that send me an email to pedro.bustamante@pandasecurity.com *after* the game ends and only if Spain wins.

At the very least we’ll get more people cheering for Spain

Finally the new Panda Cloud Antivirus Free Edition and the new Panda Cloud Antivirus Pro are here!

After only 7 months since the release of PCAV 1.0 in November 2009, which has been download by almost 10 million users, the next major release of PCAV is finally available in two flavours: Free Edition and Pro.

Download your copy from http://www.cloudantivirus.com. NOTE: there’s no need to uninstall the previous version. The new version will automatically upgrade the one you have installed.

New features and changelog:

• Behavioural blocking. Proactive, signature-less, protection against malicious actions typically used by malware. Generic blocking of malicious PDF/DOC/XLS/PPT/WMV/etc. droppers. Compatible with both 32 and 64bit Operating Systems.
• Behavioural analysis (PRO only). Runtime analysis and blocking of running processes. Compatible with 32bits Operating Systems as well as for 32bit processes under 64bit systems.
• Advanced configuration. Ability to turn on/off and tweak the behaviour of the different engines, cloud responses, advanced logging, recycle bin settings, exclusions, etc.
• Self-protection of the AV processes and configurations.
• Re-do detections that were previously un-done so that they are detected again.
• Automatic upgrades (PRO only) to new engine versions and new features automatically and transparently.
• Improved offline protection. Default deactivation of Windows Autorun.
• USB vaccination (PRO only) Automatic vaccination of USB memory keys and hard drives.
• Ability to run alongside other AVs and Anti-Spyware. Can now be run alongside other security tools and scanners.
• Full scan option. Added option to run a full PC scan easily.
• More languages. Added 9 new languages. PCAV is now available in a total of 20 languages: English, German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish, Greek, Polish, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Russian, Brazilian Portuguese, Turkish, Hungarian, Japanese, Slovak, Norwegian and Finnish.
• Quicker download & install experience thanks to new stub-installer which is 300kb in size.
• More options for restoring neutralized files. More flexibility when recovering neutralized files, allowing for automatic and manual recovery, exclusions, configuration of the Recycle Bin automatic emptying, path to recover, etc.
• Improved handling of known good files to reduce false positive rates by the new behavioural engine and automated classification from the Collective Intelligence servers.
• Optimized installation background scan by using adaptive low-priority scans.
• Improved scanning progress information by showing when a large compressed file is being scanned to avoid the perception that the stuck is stuck.
• Fixed certain situations when the PandaCloudTestFile.exe was not being detected even though the PC was correctly connected to the Internet.

Today marks an important day in the life of Panda Cloud Antivirus, the best free AV for two reasons. First of all this month is the one-year anniversary since we released the first beta. But more importantly today Collective Intelligence, the cloud-scanning backend infrastructure, has hit an important milestone: 100 million unique files analyzed. This means that our backend servers have automatically received, analyzed and created detection and disinfection routines for over 100 million unique files.

Some internal Collective Intelligence statistics that may be of interest to some of you:

• Types of files
• Malicious:  60.90%
• Goodware:  31.26%
• Under analysis:  7.84%
• New daily files
• Daily new unique files:  74009
• Of which are malware:  45738
• Backend servers
• Size of Collective Intelligence databases:   2.4 TB
• Daily logs from cloud-scanning server:   190 GB

Thanks to all Panda Cloud Antivirus users for helping us grow the Collective Intelligence community and improve the protection for all of us.