Multiscanning

Multiscanning is running multiple anti-malware or antivirus engines concurrently. Traditionally, only a single engine can actively scan a system at a given time. Using multiple engines simultaneously can result in conflicts that lead to system freezes and application failures. However, a number of security applications and application suites have optimized multiple engines to work together.

Reason

Testing agencies published results showing that no single antivirus engine is 100% effective against every malware threat. Because each engine uses different scanning methodologies and updates their malware definition files at various frequencies, using multiple engines increases the likelihood of catching malware before it can affect a system or network.

Vendors

• Coranti – Combined the engines of BitDefender, F-Prot, and the multiple ones of Lavasoft Ad-Aware. As of 31 December 2012 Coranti is no longer active.
• Emsisoft Anti-Malware – Combines an in-house engine with BitDefender engine.
• eScan Antivirus – Combines the engines of BitDefender and MWL. Business editions also include the engines.
• F-Secure – Combines an in-house engine with BitDefender's engine.
• G-Data AntiVirus – Combines in-house and BitDefender's engines. avast has been removed with version 2014.
• GFI MailEssentials – Combines the engines of Bitdefender, VIPRE, Kaspersky, Avira and McAfee, together with some in-house GFI technologies like the Trojan and Exe engine. GFI explains why one virus engine is not enough.
• HitmanPro – Combines an in-house behavioral engine with a cloud containing engines from Kaspersky Lab and BitDefender.
• Lavasoft Ad-Aware – Combines an in-house anti-spyware engine with Vipre's engine. Ad-Aware Total Security replaces Vipre with G-Data's multiple engines.
• Microsoft Forefront – Combines the engines of Authentium, Kaspersky, Norman and VirusBuster, with its own in-house engine.
• OPSWAT Metadefender – Combines a configurable number of anti-malware engines (1 to 30) to scan for malware on premise. Also available with 42 engines in the cloud.
• Qihoo 360 Internet Security use Bitdefender Engine, QVM 2 Engine,360 Cloud engine. But, Chinese version includes Avira engine additionally.
• Watchdog Anti-Malware - Combines an in-house behavioral engine with a cloud containing several engines using OPSWAT's Metsacan interface.

Open Source Tools

• MultiAV – An open source project similar to OPSWAT Metascan that combines a configurable number of anti-malware engines (1 to 15).
• MultiScanner – An open source file analysis framework that allows the user to evaluate a set of files with a set of tools. Comes with a set of modules for different malware analysis tools.

See also

• Comparison of antivirus software
• Comparison of firewalls
• Internet Security