The way it works in other games (for example, various mods of the half life engines that then get released as stand-alone games by valve and modded even further) is that it's possible to compile signature lists of certain files and compare them against what the player is using.
Then, data is collected over a somewhat long period of time (to prevent cases of accidental banning) and once every few months all the offending accounts get banned in one fell swoop. The bans are also irrevocable. Getting banned doesn't prevent a player from running his purchased games, but he can't join multiplayer from that point.
Depending on the game/publisher, different types of files are open to modding.
Finally, it's possible for individual servers to have certain aspects of a game modded and on top of that, let the user automatically download the needed files upon joining the server.
I've seen this after i tried out Team Fortress 2 (which by the way is free to play since a couple of months ago, people who bought it get a bigger inventory and more items but other than that it's entirely possible to play and be competitive with the free version too), i happened to join servers that took a while longer to load and i saw on the progress bar that files were being downloaded. Upon entering the servers, some of them had custom community made maps, others had custom sound effects or on-screen messages with their corresponding triggers and so on.
So, what does that mean for us simmers? Well, let's say in a few months we have the SDK and some documentation on scripting and higher-level FMB functions. It won't take long before we have player-made maps, aircraft and dynamic campaign engines to generate missions (there are people doing similar stuff already as far as missions are concerned, some excellent examples in the relevant sub-forum here).
This creates a situation much like IL2, where each server might be running a different version of a dynamic campaign generator with custom-tweaked mission generation parameters (eg, a battle of France server would want to create more tactical air support missions and ground combat scenarios, while a battle of Britain server would need to create more strategic bombing missions and convoy raids), not to mention community made aircraft or maps (cut-up portions of the original map to maintain playability and help with loading times/frame rates in case a specific scenario is needed that only takes part in one part of the map).
Meanwhile, players would need to have the suitable mod packs installed or they could have more or less than what's needed.
If the steam framework is applied to such a case, we'll probably be able to have it all handled automatically for us and fly on all servers with a single installation of the sim, instead of having to manually update our mod packs and installing each one on top of a separate stock installation.
I'm not going to lie, i'm not very enthusiastic about the inclusion of steam in the bundle, but this is definitely its main saving grace as far as i'm concerned and a feature that might have a lot of positive outcomes for us all sometime down the line.
I know this explanation is not directly anti-cheat related, but i think it touches on the important bit: controlling cheating while differentiating between cheats and legitimate mods, so that player created content can flourish.
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