Two former Symantec executives launched their latest startup on Wednesday, Immunet, aiming to deliver anti-malware protection to, not only a user, but that user's social network.

The company uses the cloud computing model, using a lightweight client application -- Immunet Protect -- to compress new files into a signature of about 100 attributes, which is then sent to Immunet's servers. The analysis takes place in the company's "cloud," which then decides whether the file inspected by the client is good or bad.

The marketing of a cloud antivirus service is not new. McAfee, Panda Security and Prevx have all used the cloud-computing model to describe the current services. However, Immunet's service is designed from the get-go to work efficiently as a cloud service, said the company's CEO and founder, Oliver Friedrichs.

"We are approaching this from a different perspective," he said. "Cloud is the technology that the product is built on from the start. We are not patching this on to an existing product, this is the fundamental model for Immunet Protect."

Friedrichs and Alfred Huger, Immunet's director of engineering, both had previously worked at SecurityFocus, moving to Symantec when that company bought the security firm.

Immunet is also focused on incorporating their antivirus service into social networks, said Friedrichs. Initially, the company has used the Facebook API to allow users to see which friends are on Immunet's service. In the future, the firm plans to expand that to include community data as part of detection.

"Today, we started with a basic beta implementation of this," Friedrichs said. "In the future, we well incorporate data from your social community to see how well they are protecting themselves."

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