Used for the manual scanning of selected areas on a computer, including entire drives or certain folders. For example, Windows Explorer allows an object to be selected and then scanned. The user simply chooses the on-demand Virus Scanner entry from the right-mouse button menu.

In a networked environment, the system administrator can schedule scanning operations to be run on some or on all workstations and servers within the corporation. Tasks can be run immediately, scheduled to be run at a later point in time, or scheduled to be run at some fixed interval. The on-demand scanner can use a sandbox-type of technology to add more protection levels to detect novel and unknown malware before it can create havoc on the network.

See Also: Administrator; Computer; On-Access Scanner; Malware; Server; Virus.