SleepyEgg

Considering that Microsoft feels the need to enter the antivirus market and 12 of the top 35 anti-malware makers failed Virus Bulletin's August 2009 test, one could argue that antivirus products are not where they should be. Former Symantec executive Oliver Friedrichs thinks a different approach is necessary, so he built a new cloud-based, social antivirus product called Immunet Project.

Harnessing what Immunet calls "Collective Immunity," Immunet Project claims to be able instantly fortify all of its users' computers against new virus threats. "Immunet uses a global community to collect anonymous information on applications running across the Immunet population," Friedrichs told Ars Technica. "We extract specific attributes from Windows PE files that are then coalesced in the cloud and classified as good or bad." When Immunet finds a piece of malware on a user's computer, it notifies the rest of the user network, supposedly in real time. Because of this approach, Immunet keeps most of its client infrastructure on its servers; the actual client install takes up less than 5MB of space.