News 

The university's researchers reckon that antivirus software from popular vendors is becoming increasingly ineffective. They claim some antivirus software they put to the test had detection rates of as low as 35 per cent and left PCs vulnerable for periods of 48 days.

They say their own "CloudAV" approach moves antivirus

ADVERTISEMENT

functionality into the "network cloud" and off personal computers, stating that it analyses suspicious files using multiple antivirus and behavioural detection programs simultaneously.

"CloudAV virtualises and parallelises detection functionality with multiple antivirus engines, significantly increasing overall protection," said Farnam Jahanian, professor of computer science and engineering in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

A weakness of antivirus software that resides on a PC is that, in practice, only one program can be used at a time for each PC. The team says that CloudAV is accessible to any PC on a network and can support a large number of malicious software detectors; each operating on its own virtual machine.

The researchers see mobile phones as a promising opportunity for CloudAV, as they aren't robust enough to carry powerful antivirus software.