Upgrade to Cloud Anti-Virus?

Cloud Computing

What is Internet? Internet means interconnected network and due to its complexity, many diagrams in the early days just draw a cloud to define an internet. It has no boundary for countries but everyone can access it just like we see the cloud above us. The era has arrived for us to shift part of our applications from our desktop and notebook to the cloud. Google did a splendid job in entrusting our emails online. However, it is not a cloud computing application because the emails are hosted exclusively in Google's servers.
So what is a cloud computing program? Cloud computing has a virtualized service which offloads the required infrastructure from our current desktop and notebook. To put it simply, it is a service over the internet. An example is Cloud Anti-virus or firewall application. So what are the benefits of shifting over to Cloud Anti-Virus?

Conventional Anti-Virus Applications

The current conventional method of securing a computer from viruses is by installing a local anti-virus program. It is like placing armies in a castle to create a fortress to prevent and detect spies and enemies. The early generation of anti-virus software proved efficient in fighting enemies but slowly failing in its task to prevent undercover spies (Spyware, Trojan horses and malwares). Users have to install additional applications like Adware/Scumwar, Trojan, Rootkit scanner and remover. For better control, a firewall is installed to provide an all-rounded defense.
If you are not a paid subscriber of these applications, you will not enjoy real-time protection or the update will be time consuming (eg. Avira AntiVirus). Besides these shortcomings, the critical problem of this method is the slow update of what new viruses, spywares etc are surfacing. Without knowing what are the faces of the new spies, the defenders cannot recognize and prevent them from entering the forest. The delay may be more than 30 days for any new viruses. It simply implies that the so-called "update" you have is already 30 days old from its first public appearance. Therefore, most programs are set to daily update to ensure you are catching up with the 30 days old news.

Cloud Anti-Virus

Cloud Anti-Virus reduces the update time to approximately 3 days, a 90% improvement. By sharing the same intelligence in the cloud, you will be instantly protected if anyone of the users detects and successfully removes the new virus. This is a paradigm shift as all users will be sharing a same virus database which is updated frequently. Your system will no longer bark you to download updates and it works transparently and silently in the background. Isn't that wonderful?

Limitations

If it is so good, why don't you grab it now? Wait, before you click to download, let me tell you the constraints.

• Internet Access
  First and foremost, you need an internet access to access the cloud. If you are not connected to the internet, a file transfer from an usb drive or harddisk may infect your computer. Since your computer has no virus database, all file accesses will be done by referencing to the cloud database. You will be vulnerable when you have no network. If your network is slow, scanning may also be slower as expected.
• Privacy
  Depending on the algorithms, different cloud anti-virus has different ways to scan the file for infection. If some files are sensitive in your computer, you do not want to send part or full file over to the cloud for scanning. You may not even want people to know its filename! That is the reason why financial institutions like bank or governments are slow to adopt this new technology.
• Customisation
  Next, customization is beyond your control. By tapping on to the cloud for scanning, there is no way to tell the program that you wish to omit files which you trust have no viruses. The engine decides what needs to be removed or what needs to be quarantined. You just have to accept the consequences. Many bossy corporate find this unacceptable and reject them altogether.

Download Links

There are just a handful of cloud anti-viruses programs available. For a home user, you may like to consider these two for a start. Detecting virus proves remarkably impressive so it is worth to give it a try since they are free of charge.

• Panda Cloud Anti-Virus; and
• Immunet Cloud Anti-Virus.

I am sure you will not regret getting the next generation of anti-virus software. In the near future, we should see more and more cloud applications. At the moment, I am using a Cloud Trojan Remover and the scanning speed is pretty impressive at 10 times faster than the conventional scanner. Still, it manages to stiff out and quarantine 2 Trojans from the system.