Who was/is first in this competition to provide faster malware defense from the cloud?

Trend Micro was talking about real time defense (and moving the battle to the cloud) in June of this year - Designed to reduce reliance on time-consuming pattern-downloads on the client, this new approach is expected to become a key component of Trend Micro Smart Protection Network, a next-generation cloud-client content security infrastructure designed to protect customers from Web threats. Their website is covered with information about the "Trend Micro Smart Protection Network" - http://trendmicro.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=642

F-Secure made their announcement around September 3rd of this year - When a new potential malicious program appears, the first participating F-Secure protected computers that encounter it anywhere in the world will instantly inform F-Secure’s highly automated security labs. For confirmed threats complete protection will be achieved within 60 seconds on a global basis. Consequently, as any computer with this technology queries the network, it will be instantly protected against the newly found threat, bypassing the time it has traditionally taken to send out virus database updates. http://www.f-secure.com/f-secure/pressroom/news/fs_news_20080903_01_eng.html . This is their Wellbeing family of products

McAfee - "McAfee, Inc. Reinvents Computer Security" announcement was made September 8th http://www.mcafee.com/us/about/press/corporate/2008/20080908_180000_q.html

Symantec appears to have something coming out later this year but said about their Security Suite on September 9th - "Symantec Launches Fastest Security Products in the World" http://www.symantec.com/about/news/release/article.jsp?prid=20080909_01 . This isn't real time malware defense. It's their response to public criticism about security software bloat in their Norton Internet Security suite.

Let the battle begin. The winner, ultimately, will be the consumers.