CyberSafety.co.za

Panda Security, the Cloud Security Company announced the launch of its new channel partner recruitment campaign, “Security to the power of the cloud”.

The campaign includes a webinar series to show the benefits offered by the company’s cloud-based solutions to resellers.

Training sessions will mainly focus on Panda Cloud Partner Center, a new management console for partners and will include a demo of the product. These seminars will run in both the morning and afternoon at 12:00 (GMT +2) and 18:00 (GMT +2) respectively. The dates for when the webinars will take place are on the 3^rd and 5^th of April 2012.

“Our concept of ‘Security to the power of the cloud’ is based on three major pillars for channel partners: simplicity, margin and control”, said Paula Quiros, Director of International Marketing and Communication at Panda Security. “Partners demand easy-to-use tools that make their job simpler, return the expected margins and help them keep sales processes under control”, she added.

With Panda Cloud Partner Center, partners can manage all channel activity online in real-time, while remotely enabling protection for customers’ email and endpoints, such as servers, PCs and laptops.

Additionally, Panda Cloud Partner Center lets partners manage and monitor customers’ lifecycle and take better advantage of new business opportunities through better insight into license extension and cross-selling opportunities. It also simplifies the renewal process for service providers with customizable tools to streamline channel management, enabling them to assign new and existing customers trial versions of new products.

Prospective partners interested in attending these webinars organized by Panda Security can sign up at http://securitytothecloud.pandasecurity.com.

The Cloud Security Company, Panda Security announced that Panda Antivirus Pro 2012 Beta Version, compatible with Windows 8 Consumer Preview is now available. Users who have installed the beta version of the new Microsoft operating system will benefit from the best protection against malware.

Panda Antivirus Pro 2012 is an easy-to-use antivirus protection consumer product, designed specifically to offer maximum protection with minimum resource consumption. Panda Security’s 2012 solutions leverage Collective Intelligence, the company’s exclusive cloud-computing technology, that collects threat intelligence from millions of computer users and deliver automated, instantaneous protection against known and unknown malware.

Every day PandaLabs receive nearly 73 000 new files that Collective Intelligence automatically analyzes, classifies and remedies by gathering information on malware from the worldwide Panda community. Collective Intelligence continuously improves protection levels and offers more rapid response to the newest and most dangerous malware attacks.

According to Jeremy Matthews, MD of Panda Security South Africa, “Making our 2012 solutions compatible with Microsoft’s upcoming operating system was essential for us, as for over 20 years, Panda Security has been innovating and developing new technologies to protect our customers from all kinds of threats, we are always there when users need us.” Figures show that the Consumer Preview for Windows 8 has already had over 1 million downloads.

 For more information and to download the free beta, please visit: http://www.pandasecurity.com/windows8

Many webmasters are unaware that their websites have been hacked and that they may be serving hidden links and even malicious code to their visitors.

Many hackers deface a website when they breach the web host or CMS’s security, but other hackers prefer to inject covert code into a website – often unbeknownst to the webmaster and website visitors.

Hidden links are often inserted in websites to gain Google page rank.  This means that the hacker’s websites have more back links, and therefore a higher page rank, while the website owner may be penalized for their promotion of websites containing illicit products or pornography.

South Africa’s Film and Publications Board (FPB –http://www.fpb.gov.za/) website is a good example. The website was defaced in July 2011, but the organisation said that it was repaired soon afterwards.

Unbeknownst to the FPB, they had been serving hidden website links to beauty products and even erotic video websites. This may well have happened since the initial security breach in 2011.

The FPB was contacted about the fact that their website has been a victim of hackers, and what is being done about the issue, but the organisation did not provide feedback by the time of publication.

FPB Website Source Code

To see hidden links in a website is as simple as right-clicking on the website an viewing the source (“View Page Source” in Firefox, “View Source” in Internet Explorer and “View page source” in Chrome”).

After the injected code and links are removed, it is advisable for website owners to change their passwords, check file permissions and ensure that all their software is up to date.

Earlier in the month it was announced that Cabinet has approved a national cyber security policy framework for South Africa, said Collins Chabane, Minister in the Presidency.

Chabane went on to say, “the framework was aimed at addressing national security threats in cyber space and it would combat cyber warfare, cyber crime and cyber ills, as well as build confidence and trust in the secure use of information and communication technologies.”

These initiatives will help to keep South African web users safe and secure, more security news to follow in upcoming posts.

We are happy to announce the availability of Panda Cloud Antivirus version 1.5.2. If you are reading this after seeing a “Panda Cloud Antivirus has upgraded automatically!” message on your Desktop traybar, then you already have this latest version installed and running and you don’t have to do anything else. In case you are interested you can read about the fixes introduced in this version in this blog post. If your version of Panda Cloud Antivirus hasn’t upgraded yet to version 1.5.2 yet don’t worry. As we are releasing the automatic and transparent upgrade little by little in a few days your copy of Panda Cloud Antivirus will upgrade itself automatically.

Version 1.5.2 is a maintenance upgrade from version 1.5.1 which fixes some bugs reported by the user community. The bug fixes included are the following:

• Improved on-demand scanning speeds, specially under Windows 7.
• Improved integration with Collective Intelligence backend to obtain new malware variants even faster.
• New toolbar version 3.0 with Google search instead of Yahoo search.
• Fixed slowdowns while deleting files from the computer.
• Fixed BSOD under certain conditions when unloading one of the Panda drivers.
• Fixed synchronization erros (same as already released hotfix).
• Fixed issues scanning certain type of folders (as reported by AV-Comparatives)
• Fixed upgrade notification popup showing up every 20 minutes.
• Fixed problem of certain auxiliary files being written to the root of the drive when ProgramData directory could not be found.
• Fixed disinfection problem under certain conditions on malware running in memory.
• Fixed problem under certain situations when a malware detected without Internet connectivity was not recorded in the event report.
• Fixed problems disinfecting certain malware with specific format and characteristics.

Remember that if you have any problems whatsoever with Panda Cloud Antivirus you can always ask for help at our Technical Support Forum.

Also if you like Panda Cloud Antivirus don’t forget to help us grow the community of  users. The more we are, the better protection we get. Make sure to click on the “I like CloudAV” button on the main window to easily protect your community of friends and family by letting them know about Panda Cloud Antivirus.