Research carried out by Panda has found that nearly a quarter of home computers using updated antivirus software were infected with malicious software.

The internet security company claims this shows that traditional anti-virus programs are failing to cope with the latest attacks.

The firm admitted that some computers protected by its software failed the test, although it said that its products fared well compared to the other popular anti-virus systems.

“We have not found a single anti-virus vendor that had no users with an infection”, said Pedro Bustamante, Panda’s Senior Research Advisor. “The traditional way of doing things is obviously not enough – we need to detect viruses before they get to the lab”.

Last year the firm scanned 1.5 million home and business computers using an online tool. More than a third of the computers tested had updated anti-virus software installed, but of these almost a quarter were infected with malicious software running in the computer’s memory.

Along with other security firms, Panda has warned that the number of malicious programs targeting computers is increasing as the authors attempt to evade detection, if only for a short time. It claims that its latest technology, Collective Intelligence, can help overcome the problem.

The system relies on computers reporting activity from unknown and possibly malicious software. An online system then automatically classifies the program as either malicious or harmless, so a decision to block the problem can be made without waiting for a researcher to examine it.

Current Panda security products contribute information to the Collective Intelligence system but do not actively scan new programs using the technology. Panda told Computeractive that a new range of products that use a direct connection to the online system will become available “in the next few months”.

“People will see an immediate improvement with improved detection capacity”, Mr. Bustamante told Computeractive.

To publicise Collective Intelligence, Panda is offering to scan computers free using an online tool.

Users who find that their computer is not infected will be entered into a prize draw to win an iPod Nano portable music player, and virus-free businesses can enter into a draw to win £5,000.