Kaspersky Lab has received a patent for a new technology designed to prioritize data scanning processes in virtual machines. The new technology significantly accelerates the processing of high-priority scanning requests in real time, while maintaining the performance of virtual machines. 
The patent was granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
A corporate virtual environment typically consists of a dedicated virtual machine, protected by a security solution, and a network of virtual workstations equipped with so-called agents. A network connection is established between the dedicated virtual machine and the agents to enable data exchange during an on-demand file virus scan (ODS) or an on-access application virus scan (OAS).
This approach significantly reduces resource usage on specific virtual machines while maintaining a high level of information security across the entire virtual infrastructure. However, there is a risk that on-demand file scans can consume a large amount of server resources, which in turn makes on-access scans of applications significantly more difficult.
This can significantly reduce the execution speed of applications, for which security verification must be done in real time.
The patented technology can prioritize processing tasks related to on-access scans, which positively affects the performance of virtual servers or virtual workstations, reducing the response time of the antivirus engine.
The technology “binds” one or more network connections between the agent and the dedicated virtual machine. When the “binded” connections are not busy, they can be used for both on-demand and on-access scans. When an on-access scan is required, the “binded” connection bypasses the on-demand and proceeds to the on-access scans, which are considered higher priority. This significantly increases the processing speed of priority requests.
“When developing this solution for protecting virtual infrastructure environments, such as Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer and VMware vSphere, we focused on two key requirements: minimal performance impact and maximum security. The patented technology enables fast processing of workloads for protecting virtual servers and workstations, due to the optimal distribution of scheduled tasks, taking into account the total load on the virtual infrastructure,”
commented Alexander Onishchenko, Product Manager at Kaspersky Lab.
The patented technology is integrated into Kaspersky Security for Virtualization – Light Agent. More information about the solution is available here.
