Decentralized appliance virus scanning

The invention provides a method and system for scanning specialized computing devices for viruses. In a preferred embodiment, a filer is connected to one or more supplementary computing devices that scan requested files to ensure they are virus free prior to delivery to end users. When an end user requests a file the following steps occur: First, the filer determines whether the file requested must be scanned before delivery to the end user. Second, the filer opens a channel to one of the external computing devices and sends the filename. Third, the external computing device opens the file and scans it. Fourth, the external computing device notifies the filer the results of the file scan operation. Fifth, the filer sends the file to the end user provided the status indicates it may do so.