Last night I tested the latest version of Panda’s Cloud Anti-virus. Why? I’m on the hunt for an effective free anti-virus that doesn’t use too much ram (about 25 mb tops) and doesn’t have “in your face” nag screens. Panda’s Cloud Anti-virus fits those 2 requirements, but can it really protect my clients? Yes and no.

During my testing I can see that Panda’s Cloud AV (v1.1) is able to tackle more of those zero-day threats, however it let a nasty rootkit through (see screen shots below). While that’s distressing, I can see that the free version of the Panda Cloud AV scanner is getting much better and you’ll probably be seeing more of it in the media.