Panda Cloud Antivirus: the first web-based consumer antivirus

Panda Security announced today the first consumer antivirus to run in "the cloud". The product is still in closed beta (I just signed up to be notified when a slot is avaiable for new testers), but this is what I could get from their online help page:

Reinventing the antivirus

Panda Cloud Antivirus is intelligent and has been designed to act only when necessary. It's so light, you won't notice it's there, even if you are playing or using the Internet...

The fastest in detecting new viruses

Our network of Collective Intelligence servers identifies and processes viruses automatically in a fraction of the time required by laboratory technicians.

Designed with you in mind

Now you can forget about tiresome antivirus products with incessant notifications and difficult questions. Panda Cloud Antivirus works for you without annoying you.

Updates are history

The real key to Panda Cloud Antivirus is in the Collective Intelligence servers. That's why you'll always have maximum detection capacity without relying on traditional updates.

Detects more than anyone else

The Panda servers have a database of millions of viruses allowing Panda Cloud Antivirus to detect the multitude of threats that appear every day.

The community is key

Benefit from a network of users who automatically share information about viruses detected on their computers, ensuring that solutions travel around the world in just a few seconds.

I specially found intriguing the concept behind what they called "Collective Intelligence" that "allows mega-detection capacity while reducing resource consumption" through the user's community.

Panda will be offered for free, and I'm curious to follow how the market will react to this new launch and also how competition will counter-attack. It definetly looks like a paradigm shift on the lucrative antivirus industry.

Sign-up for the beta test here.