Computer Security and "The cloud"

 "The Cloud" has been a popular topic for computer security recently. However many people gain fear when you talk about cloud security because they think that means anyone can access your files. I would like to share a little bit about the cloud and why I think it may be the future of computer security programs.

  The cloud basically means the security programs data is stores on a server rather then locally on your machine. The security program on your machine would the query the server to check on a file rather then querying the database that would normally be installed locally. Doing this has its advantages and disadvantages:

 Advantages

1. The database can be instantly updates with the latest malware detection patterns without the need of the client to update. This will allow computer security software to quickly stop the latest threats and stopping to malware infection window between security software updates

2. Cloud software is normally lighter because it does not have to do heavy analysis on your machine. With the cloud file analysis can be done on servers much more powerful then home machines.

3. The cloud can automatically rank software so you don't have to answer confusing alerts and lower your protection.

Disadvantages

1. You have t have access to the internet to take advantage of the cloud. So those of us that still don't have access to high-speed internet can't take full advantage of the cloud. However with the quick rise of high-speed internet access most of us already have access to it.

2. Cloud servers can go down, but as long as the vendor has a good plan and backup plan you most likely do not need to worry about it

FAQ

 1. Will the security vendor have access to all my files?: As long as its a trust-able vendor you should not have anything to worry about. Panda Cloud (the av that I use) does not send full files over to the cloud. They use hashes to check the files they already have. Plus they will not send personal files like .docs or .jpeg to the cloud.

2. If it has to query the server will it slow down my machine?: No the data that would be sent is normally very small. So it should be barely noticeable.