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The Spanish software company Panda has just released NanoScan, a free anti-virus online scan. The prototype (beta) represents a new twist in virus and spyware protection. First a small driver – 200K is downloaded then all tests, emulations, sandboxing etc. can be processed on line using Panda software without calling on you computer’s resources, this makes it remarkably quick, less than a minute in most cases.

As the signature database is kept on the Panda servers and not taking up space on your computer, it can affrod to be an extensively vast resource updated constantly. When it scans your system it queries the Security Centre as to which antivirus is already installed (if any), and whether it’s up to date. That lets Panda gather anonymous information about how many supposedly-protected systems are actually infected. In an initial test, they scanned 42,000 systems with fully up-to-date protection software and found 21% of them had infections despite their protection.

That said, Nanoscan doesn’t detect malicious code that is inactive at the time of the scan and cannot actively attack any malware it does find, proposing instead heavier artillery like ActiveScan2, another freeware from Panda that can also be used online. So the NanoScan should be seen for what it is – a rapid analyser for your RAM, and used as such to check if a system is healthy before an important interaction - for example.

Note: for the moment NanoScan only works inside IE but Panda are working on a Firefox-compatible version scheduled for release in April

via | SVM