Antivirus that lives in the Cloud …

 

Now a days , everything seem to be adopting itself for cloud computing … the latest edition is an antivirus by PANDA ANTIVIRUS … they call its Cloud Antivirus … which according to panda , lives in the cloud and , consumes least memory … yet provides the best protection against everything threat that internet posses to average joe !!! … But still its in BETA … and so only time can say who much successful it will be in reality … but good thing is , panda thinks to keep it free even after releasing its final version … at present its available only for XP and Vista ( too bad for me , as user of 7 and Jaunty Jackalope ) … but they are planning to release version for windows 7 too

till then , read this article from my favorite site about cloud antivirus …

With threats like Conficker fresh in the public's mind, security remains a top concern for Windows users. Panda Security, publishers of Panda Internet Security and Panda Antivirus, is set to take antivirus where it hasn't been yet: into the clouds. Panda Cloud Antivirus beta bets that nearly three years of development can pay off into a better protection system for users. To that end, Panda's willing to make the client free for personal use--even after it leaves beta testing.

 

the program uses Panda's proprietary cloud computing technology, which they call Collective Intelligence, to detect viruses, malware, rootkits, and heuristics. It takes advantage of "millions of users," according to Panda, to identify new malware almost in real time. Panda says that Collective Intelligence can classify new malware in under six minutes, and that it handles more than 50,000 new samples per day. The Cloud Antivirus works by classifying threats into executables that must be scanned immediately, and non-executables that are checked at a lower priority--usually when the computer is idle.

In exchange for using consumer data to build the Collective Intelligence database, Panda decided to offer the Panda Cloud Antivirus for free, said Pedro Bustamante, senior research adviser at Panda Security.

The new program reportedly takes up around 50 MB on the hard drive and eats around 17 MB of RAM when in use. That compares well against the industry average that Panda provided of 60 MB, and Bustamante said that they're aiming for 12 MB of RAM when in use.

Cloud computing may make sense from a system resources point of view, but what happens to system security when the computer isn't connected to the Internet? "The model we've implemented is to break down the traditional antivirus to client and server, so when the user is not connected they keep a local cache copy of Collective Intelligence, including detections for what Collective Intelligence sees is spreading through the community," he said.

Panda Cloud Antivirus is for Windows XP and Windows Vista, with planned support for Windows 7 when it's released. Bustamante added that it will stay in beta as it's being accepted by users, although they hope it will leave beta by the end of this summer.

from CNET …

Njoy …

Are we really ready for Cloud ??

All the data that make up our lives seem to be heading for the clouds. From photos on Flickr to memos on Google Docs, we are entrusting more and more to computers in giant data centers—a model called cloud computing. It's certainly convenient to have access to our stuff wherever we are and on whatever device we choose. But is it safe?

There are two kinds of risks in putting your data online. One is that you can never be quite sure who has access to your information once it has migrated beyond the hard drives and backup storage devices in your home. The other risk is that the information, and sometimes the applications you need to make use of it, may be available only when you are connected to the Internet and the service is up and running. These twin dangers are now abundantly obvious to users of a collaborative Web-based word-processing program called Google Docs. Google recently notified its users that a software glitch had allowed some subscribers unauthorized access to "a very small percentage" of these documents, which are stored on Google's servers.

The security of data stored in the cloud varies with both the design of the system and how well the safety measures are implemented. Some services encrypt information both in transit and in storage in such a way that only the owner can decrypt it. These services are generally the most secure against either accidental or malicious disclosure—though your information can be lost forever if you lose the password. In general, services that allow Web access to data from any computer are riskier than more restrictive systems, and those that allow the information to be shared among a group of users pose even greater hazards.

Sometimes you have control over this—for example, by declining an option that lets you access your data from a Web site. This choice is available on many online backup services and can be handy if, say, you are on the road and need to get a file that's on your home or business computer. But clearly that access increases the risk that your information could be exposed to third parties.

The security practices of cloud storage systems are usually described in the fine print of their security and privacy policies, but in practice it's difficult to assess safety. Corporations run security audits to gauge the practices of cloud computing operations, but this is beyond the reach of individuals or smaller businesses. The simpler course for most of us is to think before committing data to the cloud. Those photos from the family trip to Disney World ? No problem. But the term sheet for a proposed merger or acquisition should probably stay encrypted on a hard drive that you control. Anything in between? Just consider how much embarrassment or trouble it would cause in the wrong hands.

The issues of getting to your online data are less serious. The growing ubiquity of wireless services means there are fewer and fewer places where you can't get on the Net if you need to. Wi-Fi is even slowly creeping onto airplanes, the last wireless frontier.

Will your cloud service be there when you need it? Google got a lot of unwelcome attention recently when its Gmail service was unavailable for about three hours. Back in the days of the Ma Bell monopoly, AT&T promised 99.999% availability, which allowed a bit over five minutes of downtime a year. But "five nines" of reliability is fabulously expensive. Google promises its corporate Google Apps customers 99.9% uptime, which leaves room for outages of nearly nine hours a year. The fact is, most enterprises don't deliver higher reliability on their own systems; the difference is that outages on big public services get publicity.

Ultimately, putting your data in the cloud involves choosing convenience and productivity at the cost of some security risk. In the real world, convenience almost always wins, and there's nothing wrong with that. What's important is that you understand the dangers.

from BusinessWeek …

Njoy …

Cloud Computing ..... future of Computing !!!

The Cloud ... refers to Internet itself ... and so Cloud Computing means , computing with help of internet itself ... The roots of cloud computing is lying near early 90s ... where they first ever thought that internet can be used to provide various services !!! ( at that time it was used to run ATMs ) ...

But people dared to go beyond it and tried to visualize the world where all the applications run via internet .. even operating system's basic functions too !! , just Imagine you are playing free cell on internet !!! well .. its quite possible ... at present the Cloud computing offers various services like .. Web 2.0 applications ... software as a service ... tried google apps ??? ... no application installed on system ... all software and data are stored on server !!!

It has been said that Microsoft and some other companies are working to develop very first OS that is based on Cloud Computing ... who know ... may be after a year or a two .. we might be using it !!!

Cloud computing is getting fame at present time ... because of couple of unbeatable features that no one else can offer .... features like ... its very cheap to use ... device and location independence ... scalability ... but still there are some features that need to gain confidence of users like ... less security ... how can you feel secure about your data stored online rather then on your hard driver ?? ... and unreliability ... what if the application server goes down ?? or if you have insufficient bandwidth ?? ...

But the basic and main requirement of cloud computing is ... guess what ??? ..... ya .. its High speed internet ... right ?? and bad news is the total percentage of internet uses are about nealy 21% ... and even worse is , all these 21% aren't using high speed internet like DSL or Cable ... high number of people are still using DialUp .. i guess its pretty slow for cloud computing ... and i think it is the only reason whey cloud computing is not much popular ....