Back in September, I wrote about Symantec moving its Anti-virus into the cloud. That is an idea that makes sense, to share the data and computational load between the client and the back end hosted server ala cloud computing. F-Secure believes it the idea so much, that they are working on an entire suit of local/remote security solutions that rely on the host, and the cloud.
The basic premise of the process is that the client even though they are very good computers can not keep up with the demands that are needed to ensure security. The issues start with the very large data files that contain hashes of viruses, scans of the local computing environment, near real-time black hole lists, and the continuous updating of the security suit that protects modern computing environments. The idea behind the F-Secure suit is to share the burden, all the large data systems, file systems, and updated files will remain in the cloud, while the local host will run local applications, while calling data chunks from the cloud to make sure they are updated.
Rather that pushing down a full rule set, the local AV AS and Firewall can download or access updates as needed. The leverage here can also work for rule sets in primary firewalls, spam walls, monitoring and logging of events along the way. Imagine if your systems are tied via a VPN from client to server to cloud providing the defense in depth at a much cheaper cost than can be obtained using local resources, or dwindling budgets. Cloud computing has some great aspects around the idea of being able to extend security from a reactive to a reacting system.
While no security person is ever going to trust automation fully, limited automation between cloud, server and host makes sense. As companies draw down their employees, this also makes financial sense along the way.
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I think you have it a bit wrong. I don’t think the goal of the cloud is to take the load off the PC. Or, as you say “the client even though they are very good computers can not keep up with the demands that are needed to ensure security.”
It is the security software companies that cannot keep up. The purpose of the cloud, in the practice of some of the better thinking AV companies, is to put the onus on the community to identify bad code, define it, solve it, and share that info with members of the cloud. This is the most effective way to rollout definitions, defend zero day threats and end reliability on the often painfully slow practices of these AV companies when it comes to implementing fixes.