Panda Secures Samba File Sharing

Panda Software has extended its enterprise family of products and has released a free download of Panda SambaSecure Antivirus. A beta version of the software reveals Panda's intentions to offer customers a solution to protect Samba files servers and workstations from malware as they share resources between Windows and Linux on corporate networks.

Samba is a free, open source implementation of Microsoft's networking system that provides file and print sharing, as well as domain services. Samba is primarily used in Unix and Linux environments to facilitate communication with Windows systems, but the software is also included with Mac OS X.

SambaSecure Antivirus provides real-time antivirus scanning of files and directories, shared and unshared; scans within and repairs compressed archives; scans symbolic links; and uses caching to prevent unaltered files from being rescanned unnecessarily. Users also have the option of both scheduled and on-demand heuristic scans.

Administrative features include a secure HTTPS Web console that is accessible from any workstation or even the Internet. The console manages the software and provides administrators with a snapshot of current activity from virus scans to the status of the server.

In addition to the console, administrators are notified via e-mail when malware is detected.

According to Panda, SambaSecure Antivirus is self updating at daily intervals, and self diagnoses any potential problems with its components as a check to ensure that the software is operating correctly.

The beta of SambaSecure Antivirus may be downloaded from Panda Software's Web site.