I’m sitting in a presentation at the Virus Bulletin conference in Geneva. The topic is “Why in the Cloud scanning is not a solution. The presentation is done by Andreas Marx and Maik Morgenstern from AV-Test.org.
What they found in extensive testing is that “Cloud” scanners do not have a detection advantage over traditional solutions. In one example they showed where a product had no normal or cloud detection, but did have detection in tradition beta signatures. In some cases cloud based products added detection much later than a traditional solutions.
AV-Test found that the size of the data bases on the desktop did not decrease and memory use on the local PC was not improved be the use of “Cloud” based systems.
At times, due to a variety of factors, the “Cloud” based systems are unavailable due to connectivity problems.
“Cloud” is a marketing term. If you think that drinking the right brand of beer makes you sexier you’re going to love “Cloud” marketing. If you think for yourself you look at the technologies and ask “Does a ‘cloud’ based solution actually perform better?”
When you see “Cloud computing”, remember, this is a hype based approach to marketing when they don’t want to tell you the technical merits of the products, they want you to think that the right beer makes you sexier!
Adding Internet components (that’s what cloud really means) can enhance a product, but does not automatically do so.
Randy Abrams
Director of Technical Education
