Building on its cloud-based anti-virus service for consumers, Panda Security is launching Panda Cloud Protection, a hosted security service for small and midsized businesses.Panda Security's Cloud Anti-Virus free service for consumers went into public beta last spring, and is now in final, still-free, release.

Panda's Cloud Protection aims to take the lessons learned from that program, as well as from its Managed Office Protection Security as a Service. tweak and leverage them with business network-appropriate features and details and give small and midsized businesses the chance to get the details and overhead (both system and administrative) off the premises and into the cloud.

The new service employs Panda's Collective Intelligence multi-terabyte threat database for real-time malware scanning and spam identification.

Run from a Web-based console, Cloud Protection is described as offering both lower overhead because of its hosted service, rather than fully resident-software, nature, and also because of its employment of peer-to-peer updating of the local elements within the business network. Instead of updating each endpoint individually via Web downloads, Cloud Protection searches the network for a recently updated iteration of its agent, and updates from there.

Cloud Protection includes e-mail scanning, spam filtering, personal firewall, Instant Message and endpoint protection. Pricing begins at around $60 per seat for smaller businesses with discounts for larger numbers of licenses. Cloud Protection is also available to hosted service resellers.

Panda offers a free trial here. (Registration required.)