Security architecture for virtual machines

Abstract

Among a plurality of virtual machines running on a host system are a set of virtual machines that provide an operating system, a lightweight agent module, and user applications to be executed. Also, a special-purpose virtual machine executes a central security module. The central security module performs security-related tasks on behalf of individual ones of the other virtual machines, and includes a malware remediation module that generates malware remediation instructions to be executed by the respective virtual machines. The central security module also assesses a capability of a first instruction sequence execution module of a first lightweight agent module to effectively execute the malware remediation instructions, and provides an advanced security task execution component to be installed in a first virtual machine corresponding to the first lightweight agent module, in response to an assessment of capability of the first lightweight agent module being insufficient to execute the malware remediation instructions.