The new products continue Kaspersky's hybrid approach to security by combining PC software with cloud-based services, the company's Senior Director of Product Marketing Peter Beardmore explained at a Web conference announcing the latest versions of Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2012($59.95) and Kaspersky Internet Security 2012 ($79.95), which combines anti-virus protection with Web surfing safeguards.

Incorporating cloud features into the products has especially improved the speed at which the company reacts to cyber threats, Beardmore notes.

"Today's threats really come on fast making most of their damage inside the first couple of hours of existence," Beardmore said, "So having a mechanism to deliver threat information on as fast a manner as possible is critically important."

However, Beardmore continues, the cloud alone can't provide sufficient protection, especially if a connection to the cloud in unavailable or if bandwidth problems enfeeble a cloud service's responsiveness. This is why Kaspersky has chosen the hybrid approach.

How that approach works can be seen in one of the new features in the company's anti-virus software. The feature, File Adviser, allows a user to click on any file and pull up reputation information about it. That information is kept current with real time data pushed to the application from the cloud.