When it originally debuted, Panda Cloud Antivirus was notable as a free security solution for two reasons: Panda traded on its reputation as a solid security suite vendor making its first foray into the realm of freeware, and the program attained its goal of freeing up system resources by putting much of the program’s heavy lifting in the cloud. Now we can add a third reason to the list: it’s now known as an effective alternative to the security powerhouses.

When you open Cloud Antivirus, the main window lets you know whether you’re safe or not with a big red or green icon. Cloud Antivirus works as other antivirus solutions do, offering a Quick Scan and a Custom scan for specific folder, files, and drives, but its ancillary features are exceptionally light. You can opt out of contributing anonymous data to the cloud, but that also opts you out of automatic threat management. There’s a network connection proxy option should you need it, and a reporting feature that will show you what kind of threats have been detected and removed from your computer. You can filter the report by All, Last 24 hours, Last Week, or Last Month, and there’s a Recycle Bin pane from which you can recover a false positive, should you need it. The modest level of tweaks and customizations have been hidden behind an obnoxious “flipping” screen that cheesily rotates when you need to access it, but they do provide choices in a clean UI that weren’t available before.

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