Patent ID: 6944775

Claim:
A method for scanning data utilizing multiple scanning engines, comprising: (a) generating a request for data to be scanned for viruses utilizing a scanning interface; (b) sending the request to scan data to a plurality of scanning engines utilizing an engine interface application control module coupled between the scanning interface and the scanning engines, the request being adapted for prompting the scanning engines to scan the data and respond with events upon locating a virus; (c) receiving the events utilizing an event processor module coupled to the scanning engines and the engine interface application control module for processing the events; and (d) transmitting the processed events to the engine interface application control module for being monitored by the scanning interface; wherein the engine interface application control module translates the requests and events for each of the scanning engines; wherein the scanning engines are unique proprietary scanning engines each associated with a different vendor; wherein the requests and events for each of the scanning engines are in a format different from formats of the other scanning engines; wherein the scanning engines are incompatible scanning engines; wherein different proprietary scanning engines are combined into a single product.