Patent ID: 7023861

Claim:
A network bridge, said network bridge including a malware scanner: wherein said network bridge is address-transparent with respect to data packets passing therethrough, such that at least in terms of addressing, no configuration changes are required when said network bridge is introduced in an associated network segment; wherein, upon receipt of at least one of said data packets, said network bridge determines if said at least one data packet is intended for a recipient on a side of said network bridge on which said at least one data packet was received; wherein, if it is determined that said at least one data packet is intended for a recipient on a side of said network bridge on which said at least one data packet was received, said at least one data packet is not passed by said network bridge; wherein, if it is determined that said at least one data packet is not intended for a recipient on a side of said network bridge on which said at least one data packet was received, it is determined if said at least one data packet has a predetermined network layer protocol selected from the group consisting of TCP/IP; IPX; SNA; and Appletalk; wherein, if it is determined that said at least one data packet has said predetermined network layer protocol, it is determined if said at least one data packet has a predetermined application layer protocol selected from the group consisting of SMTP; FTP; HTTP; SMB; and NFS; wherein, if it is determined that said at least one data packet has said predetermined application layer protocol, portions of a data file from a plurality of said data packets are concatenated to form a data file to be scanned; wherein, if it is determined that said at least one data packet does not have said predetermined application layer protocol, said at least one data packet is passed by said network bridge without being scanned.