Serious Discussion Cloud Antivirus vs. Traditional Antivirus — Which Actually Protects You Better in 2025? ☁️🛡️

[BSONE]

Please answer a question for me. Why do many AVs, even though they claim to use the cloud in their products, still update their database signatures?

I suspect the reason is that prevention is better than a cure. If the AV can detect malware before it gets on your device or before you launch it, it is better than using cloud lookup or behavioural analysis after you launch the program.

 

[stonjean633]

Panda now

Spoiler: :p

I got faith this sleeping Panda will rise under Watchguard. It's part of the business that to be able to market Watchguard appliance,UTM, Endpoints and other Enterprise products, they need to make Panda Security better.

 

[oldschool]

I got faith this sleeping Panda will rise under Watchguard. It's part of the business that to be able to market Watchguard appliance,UTM, Endpoints and other Enterprise products, they need to make Panda Security better.

One can only hope. And lots of probably wouldn't hurt, either.

 

[roger_m]

Found it: It was called NANOSCAN and it ran off ACTIVEX

At one point, a number of antiviruses had ActiveX based scanners that ran in Internet Explorer.

 

[oldschool]

@stonjean633 it appears the Watchguard purchase mainly affects their endpoint/EDR solutions. Probably no impact on Panda's consumer offerings?

 

[ForgottenSeer 114717]

> Cloud Antivirus vs. Traditional Antivirus — Which Actually Protects You Better in 2025?

That's like asking what is better - water from the Atlantic or the Pacific ocean?

Whales don't care as long as they can get away from the hoomans.

Great White sharks don't care because they'll eat hoomans in any water. Not a bad solution to solving the hooman problem at a global scale. Force all the hoomans to take a bath with a Great White shark in the tub.

 

[stonjean633]

@stonjean633 it appears the Watchguard purchase mainly affects their endpoint/EDR solutions. Probably no impact on Panda's consumer offerings?

We can think of Panda mostly security in the software side, WG was more on the network security on the hardware side. By combining those two, they can create unified threat managements (UTM) All in one security solution.
Consumer and Enterprise have the same signature offerings thou. Only difference is the SLA as enterprise are priority numero uno.

If Panda's detection is mediocre, then likely sales of the WG hardware and the modular license keys will be affected. That's why I believe they will improve to cater to the bigger enterprise market. This way, they will be able to compete with the likes of Fortinet, Palo Alto, K7, Sophos,Cisco,Trend Micro,Kaspersky etc etc.

 

[piquiteco]

If Panda's detection is mediocre, then likely sales of the WG hardware and the modular license keys will be affected.

Currently, even the paid version of Panda (Dome) is nowhere near as good as other products such as McAfee, Trend Micro, Bitdefender, Kaspersky, among others?

 

[stonjean633]

Currently, even the paid version of Panda (Dome) is nowhere near as good as other products such as McAfee, Trend Micro, Bitdefender, Kaspersky, among others?

Exactly. They are lagging behind in the detection at present. Improve the detection, sales will follow.

 

[piquiteco]

Exactly. They are lagging behind in the detection at present. Improve the detection, sales will follow.

I just watched a video testing Panda Dome (Free) against 1,000 malware samples, and it had a detection rate of 76%. I don't really like these tests where the guy uses a Python script to bombard the AV with one malware sample after another. But anyway, Panda had a detection rate of 76%, which is quite low compared to top-of-the-line security products that reach 99%. In the video, the guy showed that it was only consuming 46MB, including Panda's processes. It's super lightweight, but leaves something to be desired in terms of protection.

 

[stonjean633]

I just watched a video testing Panda Dome (Free) against 1,000 malware samples, and it had a detection rate of 76%. I don't really like these tests where the guy uses a Python script to bombard the AV with one malware sample after another. But anyway, Panda had a detection rate of 76%, which is quite low compared to top-of-the-line security products that reach 99%. In the video, the guy showed that it was only consuming 46MB, including Panda's processes. It's super lightweight, but leaves something to be desired in terms of protection.

I got Panda on one of my machines. I can say it's really light close to Eset.

 

[KnownStormChaser]

I just watched a video testing Panda Dome (Free) against 1,000 malware samples, and it had a detection rate of 76%. I don't really like these tests where the guy uses a Python script to bombard the AV with one malware sample after another. But anyway, Panda had a detection rate of 76%, which is quite low compared to top-of-the-line security products that reach 99%. In the video, the guy showed that it was only consuming 46MB, including Panda's processes. It's super lightweight, but leaves something to be desired in terms of protection.

App Review - Panda Dome Free Antivirus 2025

Panda Dome is a Spanish-based antivirus, acquired by WatchGuard a few years ago. There are few changes in this 2025 version, but Panda is banking on artificial intelligence. Let's check it out! Interface : The interface is unchanged but modern. Panda offers a few settings, but remains easy...

malwaretips.com

@Shadowra Tested it earlier this year and not a great result either. McAfee is a much better by comparison.

 

[Sorrento]

I quite liked some things about Panda the UI for example, & how light it was & I used Dome for some time + there was a member some years ago that used to feel it was pretty good, & I thought as a layman that cloud based must work well, with a fast internet connection surely what can go wrong, what Panda knows you can know instantly? It hasn't worked out that way though & frankly I'm not sure why? A hybrid approach at least for now seems the best solution though I feel things will change more toward cloud based AV when someone from scratch gets it right? - I'm on line always, apart from rare outages I'm connected by quite fast fibre all the time so for me protection offline is almost irreverent.

I do wonder under normal use & a cloud based AV not being bombarded by hundreds of malware at the same time which is real life just how the likes of panda will perform in those situations, like for me? I might even give it a try, if you never hear from me again ......??

 

[piquiteco]

I do wonder under normal use & a cloud based AV not being bombarded by hundreds of malware at the same time which is real life just how the likes of panda will perform in those situations, like for me? I might even give it a try, if you never hear from me again ......??

If you want, I can get the Python script for you to test. I download the samples manually from that website that everyone knows, about 100 samples or more. If you prefer, I can send them to you via PM and you can test them on a VM.

App Review - Panda Dome Free Antivirus 2025

Panda Dome is a Spanish-based antivirus, acquired by WatchGuard a few years ago. There are few changes in this 2025 version, but Panda is banking on artificial intelligence. Let's check it out! Interface : The interface is unchanged but modern. Panda offers a few settings, but remains easy...

malwaretips.com

@Shadowra Tested it earlier this year and not a great result either. McAfee is a much better by comparison.

Once again, thank you for sharing. It was great to watch the Panda Dome Free test video posted in March this year again. In fact, Panda didn't do well in the tests that @Shadowra conducted.

 

[BSONE]

I remember using Webroot with Norton or Emsisoft? together about 15 years ago. The Webroot cloud absolutely saved me once when I clicked on a video file with a double extension.

 

[TairikuOkami]

But anyway, Panda had a detection rate of 76%, which is quite low compared to top-of-the-line security products that reach 99%.

It is interesting though that in AV tests, Panda Free always scores well. I would never rely on Panda alone, but it is a nice supplement, because it is so light, being the real cloud AV.

It is funny, that Kaspersky calls their product Cloud AV, while based on their own definition, it is not.

What is Cloud Antivirus? | Definition and Benefits

Industry definition for the term Cloud Antivirus. Cloud antivirus programs offload antivirus workloads to a cloud-based server, rather than bogging down a user's computer…

www.kaspersky.co.uk

To put it simply, if AV downloads virus defections, it is clearly not a cloud AV. I miss McAfee Cloud.

 

[Nunzio_77]

In my opinion, Panda Dome Free is a good antivirus. They should improve their malware detection performance, improve behavioral analysis, and include web protection. Given its low resource consumption and graphical interface (I like it), with these improvements, it could compete with other free AV programs.

 

[piquiteco]

It is interesting though that in AV tests, Panda Free always scores well. I would never rely on Panda alone, but it is a nice supplement, because it is so light, being the real cloud AV.

Yes, it's true that until October 2024 it had AV-TEST's TOP seal and scored well, but after that Panda went into decline and didn't receive any more seals from October 2024 to June 2025. It really is a totally cloud-based and super lightweight AV. It's a shame it's not very efficient. If anyone wants to see these test results do AV-TEST de October 2024 you can check it out here

Spoiler: AV-TEST October 2024

In my opinion, Panda Dome Free is a good antivirus. They should improve their malware detection performance, improve behavioral analysis, and include web protection. Given its low resource consumption and graphical interface (I like it), with these improvements, it could compete with other free AV programs.

+1 Exactly, Panda needs to improve the product itself. I also liked it when I used Panda Dome; I really liked the interface and how lightweight it was.

 

[roger_m]

I do wonder under normal use & a cloud based AV not being bombarded by hundreds of malware at the same time which is real life just how the likes of panda will perform in those situations, like for me?

It has done very badly when tested here, as they are slow to add signatures for new threats and the behavioural detection is very poor, so it's not good at detecting malware that it doesn't have signatures for. So it's not a product I would ever recommend.

 

[Parkinsond]

This is the case with Bitdefender, which updates every hour

B has a side, sacred mission of consuming SSD life as fast as possible.