Abstract: Disclosed are systems and methods for ensuring fault tolerance of antivirus protection realized in a virtual environment. An example method includes collecting, by a antivirus agent in a virtual machine, information about available security virtual machines that provide at least one or more resource-intensive methods of antivirus checking of programs running on the virtual machine; analyzing the collected information to determine a location of the virtual machine relative to the security virtual machines and determine priorities for each of the security virtual machines based on the location of the virtual machine relative; forming a list of the available security virtual machines according to the priorities of the security virtual machines to identify a primary security virtual machine; connecting the virtual machine to the primary security virtual machine; and requesting the primary security virtual machine to perform at least antivirus checking of one or more programs running on the virtual machine.