Can there be any cloud firewall that can optimize the incoming and outgoing traffic based on information gathered in the cloud database?
Online Armor has a cloud blacklist/whitelist (I think it's cloud based), so that you don't have a popup for every program that wants to access the net.
Yes I think ZA also have so. But these are partial cloud based firewall. I am talking about a complete cloud type firewall where in default mode it will remain silent and all the decisions, like which traffic should be in and which should be going out, will be in the cloud. Unlike the decisions of outgoing traffics that is based on digital signatures, decisions in cloud will be based on comparing the checksum with the original executables in the cloud so that changes in the binaries made by malwares can be detected. Obviously the user will be alerted about the decision. Regarding incoming traffics it ill be able to selectively pass safe traffics based on a constantly growing database. Then I think no configurations like Home, Office or Public will be required. Obviously there will be an advanced mode that will make the firewall behave as a classic one. I think all the silent firewall provided with the suite and the one in windows lacks something because they can't discriminate among safe and dangerous applications. Addition of cloud can make this better. Cloud firewall will be more useful compared to cloud AV because for firewalls there is no need of protection at offline mode. HIPS part can be taken care off by other softwares. Although I have only some basic knowledge about firewalls, I think this can be done practically. May be some privacy will be reduced but if it is your trusted vendor this shouldn't be a problem.
We had a discussion about it on the Panda cloud forums but nothing official was decided about making one. Though I do have a feeling it's on the list of things suggest by PCAV users that may one day be looked into
