CloudAV

What Does CloudAV Mean?

CloudAV is an anti-virus program that runs as an Internet service and facilitates the use of multiple anti-virus programs without running on a local machine and impacting performance. CloudAV is proven effective against the majority of virus and malware, including zero-day threats.

Techopedia Explains CloudAV

Developed at the University of Michigan, CloudAV uses the following components to produce a high-quality anti-virus system in the cloud:

A cross-platform host agent
Two behavioral detection engines (resource heavy)
A network service with 10 anti-virus engines

CloudAV uses a technique known as N-version protection, which uses multiple versions of the same anti-virus detection engines to identify malicious software. This protection mechanism scans received files before they are opened by a user.

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Margaret Rouse

Technology Specialist

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.

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