Kaspersky Lab has received a patent for a new technology, which is designed to prioritize data scanning processes on virtual machines. This new technology significantly speeds up the processing of high-priority real-time scan requests while maintaining virtual machine performance. 
The patent was granted by the Patent and Trademark Office of USA.
A corporate virtual environment usually consists of a special virtual machine, which is 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 scan for viruses (ODS) or an on-access application scan for viruses (OAS).
This approach greatly reduces the use of resources in specific virtual machines, while maintaining a high level of information security across the virtual infrastructure. However, there is a risk that on-demand file scans may be consuming a large amount of server resources, which in turn significantly impedes on-access application scans.
This can significantly reduce the execution speed of applications for which security confirmation needs to be done in real time.
Patented technology can put the on-access scans into higher priority, which positively affects the performance of virtual servers or virtual workstations, reducing the response time of the antivirus engine.
Technology binds one or more network connections between the agent and the dedicated virtual machine. When "reserved" connections are not busy, they can be used for both on-demand and on-access scans. When an on-access scan is required, the "tied" connection overtakes on-demand and proceeds to on-access scans, which are considered higher priority. This significantly increases the processing speed of priority requests.
"When we developed this solution to protect virtual infrastructure environments such as Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer and VMware vSphere, we focused on two key conditions: minimal performance impact and maximum security. Patented technology makes it possible to quickly process loads to protect virtual servers and workstations because of the optimal distribution of scheduled tasks, taking account of all the load on the virtual infrastructure,
commented Alexander Onishchenko, Product Manager of Kaspersky Lab.
Patented technology is built into Kaspersky Security for Virtualization - Light Agent. More information about the solution is available here.
