EICAR was formally set up in September 1991 (although an inaugural meeting had taken place in the previous year), with the aim of providing a forum for technical, security and legal experts from the security industry, government and corporate bodies to combine their efforts against malicious code. EICAR was designed to complement the CARO organization, which is made up solely of anti-virus experts.

EICAR is probably best known for providing an industry-standard test file (the ‘EICAR Standard Anti-Virus Test File’) that can be used to check that anti-virus software has been installed correctly, is working and responds appropriately when a virus has been detected.