1. A computer program product for scanning files in a network environment including a plurality of scanner nodes, the computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium having computer readable program code embodied therein that executes to perform operations, the operations comprising: providing a list of the scanner nodes in the network and for each of the scanner nodes a performance value; receiving a file request with respect to a file; in response to the file request, selecting one of the scanner nodes in the list based on the performance values of the scanner nodes; transmitting the file to the selected scanner node to perform a scan operation with respect to the file; receiving indication from the selected scanner node performing the scan operation whether a subset of code in the file matches code in a definition set; and processing the file request to result in execution of the file request based on the indication of whether the subset of code in the file matches a definition in the definition set.