Everybody talks about "clouds" nowadays. Translated from technology
talk to English, the cloud represents a method for storing your
resources on an external computer system. It might be your e-mail at
Google, which is stored and accessed remotely, your Dropbox file vault,
or maybe some web service to store your contacts and tasks. When we talk
about security, "cloud" is basically the same: your anti-virus software
is constantly connected to the external computer system, which helps
block the most advanced threats. It’s that simple. But let’s dig into
the details.
All consumer Kaspersky Lab products support
the Kaspersky Security Network - our own cloud-based security system,
which was actually the first cloud to ever be deployed. When you install
Kaspersky Internet Security 2012 or Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2012, at some
point you’re asked if you would like to participate in this network. If
you agree (which we strongly recommend you do - all it does is help,
nothing else), you’ll never be on your own again to face modern threats:
there will always be more than 50 million users, and of course
Kaspersky Lab’s experts, to face - and beat - them with you.
So
how does it work? First, if a new threat appears online, the Kaspersky
Security Network ensures that you’ll get to know about it in less than a
minute - practically real-time! You won’t receive a special
notification, but if you visit an infected website, or come across a
file containing the new malware, it will be blocked immediately. Compare
this to the standard way anti-virus software lets you know about new
threats: it takes an hour or even longer to receive a signature database
update.
Second, if you happen to be one the first to
encounter a new malicious object or file detected by Kaspersky Lab’s
proactive protection, the incident is reported to both other users and
KL’s security experts. The Kaspersky Security Network holds the
information on reputation of files and websites. You and other users
help to populate it, so for most web pages and files it is easy to
decide - is it OK or not. You can even manually request reputation info
for a new file, and receive data like this:
As you can see
here, we can trust this installation file completely, because other
users know about it and consider it safe. It goes without saying that
data sent to the Kaspersky Security Network is completely anonymous, and
no personal information is uploaded. It also contains information not
only on malware, but also on legitimate files, which forms a so-called
Whitelisting database. Knowing that the program is 100% OK is as
important as having data on malicious objects.
Finally, if
you happen to use Kaspersky Internet Security 2012, it also uses the
Kaspersky Security Network to better fight spam. The built-in anti-spam
system in this product does not require training where you first tell it
what e-mails are unsolicited. Instead it just knows and blocks spam
messages, based on information from the cloud.
Kaspersky
Security Network is an essential tool to deal with new and previously
unknown threats. Can it deal with all malicious objects? Certainly not,
that is why we utilize the Hybrid Protection approach, when cloud-based
security efficiently works as part of a team with "offline" protection
technologies. Combining the "wisdom of the crowd" with the 24/7 work of
Kaspersky Lab’s experts is the best possible way to protect your
personal data.
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