In spite of the bad name cloud computing hype gets, there are some things that seem to make sense. I am using Prevx 3, which is really an augmentation of conventional AVs, although it does do the AV/AM functions fine by itself as long as you are online. It is really a tool for looking for new threats that may not be in a conventional AV DB yet, although it has a bunch of other features for BB etc. Runs fine alongside Avast! and is very small. Data base is only a couple of MB, program about a MB, scan reports to data center a couple of MB. It scans and keeps a map of your system and looks for new processes, evaluates their characteristics and reports them to the data center, and gets feedback on threat potential from the data center and other users via the same link. If you are offline, doesn't really do much, but online works very quickly to characterize and report threats. Essentially a way to instrument the users as collection/evaluation centers that produce data that can be shared across the community via the "cloud". Similar concept to
http://rationalsecurity.typepad.com/blog/2007/12/thinning-the-he.html . Panda just sounds guilty of "cloud abuse".
Various discussions of Prevx on Wilders on everything from performance, FPs, privacy considerations, future plans, ... .
