Communication between the different parts of Norman Virus Control is done through an Application Program Interface (API). This has made it possible to enable the virus scanning itself to be performed as distributed processes across networks.

By taking advantage of this architecture, Norman's solutions make it possible to develop an antivirus application that is portable to virtually any kind of devices. This application is detached from the actual Intel-based scanning for viruses.

The scanning for viruses and other malware is accomplished by transferring the necessary file Input/Output (IO)from a device across an IP-based network connection to an NVCnet service. This service resides on an Intel-based system (running Windows NT/2000/2003). The scanning itself is carried out on this computer. Since the scanner engine usually only needs fragments of the objects to detect an infection, this is highly efficient.

The client side of NVCnet consists of portable source code for a simple file scanning utility. This will provide the necessary mechanisms to let the remote service perform a virus check of the file object.

This basic utility together with source code and technical documentation will establish a framework for third-party developers in a variety of networked environments.