The operating system must employ malicious code protection mechanisms at workstations, servers, or mobile computing devices on the network to detect and eradicate malicious code transported by electronic mail, electronic mail attachments, web accesses, removable media, or other common means.

In order to minimize potential negative impact to the organization caused by malicious code, it is imperative that malicious code is identified and eradicated prior to entering protected enclaves via operating system entry and exit points.

The requirement states that AV and malware protection applications must be used at entry and exit points. For the operating system, this means an anti-virus application must be installed on machines that are the entry and exit points.