A system, method, and computer program product for scanning downloaded files providing improved performance relative to conventional download scanning techniques by performing the download and scanning functions in parallel and random order, thus improving overall performance. A method of scanning a requested file for a computer malware comprising the steps of: receiving a request from a user system to transfer a file from a server. Starting to transfer said file, and at the same time, handing a partial copy of the file to computer malware scanning software, receiving requests from the computer malware scanning software for data comprising additional arbitrary portions of the requested file, transferring only the requested portion of the file and supplying the requested data to the computer malware scanning software until the malware scanning software can produce a clean/infected indication. Then completing the transfer of the entire file from the server and handing it off to the user system in parallel.