Scheduled scans on Mac

Cjo

Hello,

We are running Bit Fender Total Security on our macs and I want to be able to configure scheduled scans of the devices. How do I do that? thank you!

Alexandru_BD

Hello @Cjo and welcome to the Community!

The Antivirus for Mac provides three types of scanning: Quick Scan, System Scan and Custom Scan.

You cand find more information regarding this by clicking on the link below:

https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/2544/

Best regards.

Cjo

thank you - but this still does not fix my problem of scheduling scans

Alexandru_BD

Hi,

Currently, the Antivirus for Mac product is registered as a listener to one daemon (service in the macOS subsystem- fseventsd) which sends notifications to listeners about file modifications (name, location, content, file attributes, etc.). This means that, every single modification made to a file will get to Bitdefender in order to scan it. When a file is modified, the inode for that file is modified. The inode is a data structure in a Unix-style file system that describes a filesystem object such as a file or a directory.

Also, our product includes an advanced caching mechanism, based on file inode. Once the file has passed our scanning engines for being clean, its metadata (based on inode and other information) is added in the file cache, which is kept in the memory - also mapped on disk - compressed.

Furthermore, the product comes with Autopilot (which automatically updates Bitdefender every hour, rescans automatically the critical locations and the memory and the Quick Scan targets. If an infected file is detected in the memory or in one of the targets from Quick Scan, the file cache is invalidated - purged. Then every file that gets to our product is scanned and the file cache is recreated.

Therefore, the software does not have the option of scheduled scanning.

Best regards.

Cjo

Hi Alexandru, I appreciate your reply - thank you very much - have a wonderful day!

Bver911

I had this same question about Scheduled Scans on a Mac. BitDefender's response is, well, interesting. Sounds like there is a LOT going on in the background - to preclude having a Schedule Scan?

Doesn't the PC version have Scheduled Scan? Is the Mac version that different?

Thanks

Alexandru_BD

Hello @Bver911,

Mac OS is a much more strict environment than Windows, a situation that has two effects: one is that Mac OSX does not require the same amount of extensive anti-malware modules as access is much more restricted to any 3rd party (not only including possible malicious apps / files, but the same restrictions apply to 3rd party software manufactures such as ourselves). 

The second effect is that since the OS is much more restrictive, mirroring the same in-depth technologies available on Windows is not possible on Mac OSX.

Yes, there is indeed a lot of work going on in the background 🙂

Best regards.

Jieef

Hello,

When I understand correctly it is normally not necessary to make own scans. The work in the background is sufficient to be safe.

Best regards,

Jieef

TomTerrific

Interesting. I started Bitdefender on my macbook pro this evening for the first time in a while. It says I have not scanned the machine in 238 days and updated the software before it would let me scan anything. That's because I assumed it would scan it without me having to tell it to do the one thing is was designed and intended to do. I read the posts here with interest. I have been using BD for nearly one year, and I have never heard of Autopilot before. It's not in the apps list. It's not in the App store. Must be a secret app. So, we have established that BD for mac does not do this basic thing. The question remains, "How do we get it to scan the whole machine, and update the programs automatically?" Yes, I read the comments about mysterious "background" processes "doing all the work." Sorry, folks, but that does not wash. Security intrusions happen asynchronously - when they happen. If someone has told you that OSX, Macs, etc. are all immune from hacking, smack them hard. It is not true. The methods are different, but the results can be the same - a compromised machine and/or files. Background scanning is necessary. Updated security software is a necessity without question.

Alexandru_BD

Hi @TomTerrific and thanks for joining us here.

I think there are a couple of important mentions to consider here:

The antivirus has a shield that scans applications in real time, whenever they are accessed ("accessed" does not mean only when you double-click on them).

The antivirus doesn't update applications, this has to be manually done by the user.

Autopilot is not an application to look for in the app store, it's a built-in antivirus feature.

Regarding updates, the automatic update is enabled by default. If you are connected to the Internet and Bitdefender Shield is enabled in Preferences > Protection, Antivirus for Mac checks for software updates every hour. When an update is detected, it is automatically downloaded and installed on your Mac.

And yes, you are correct, Macs are not immune from hacking 😉

Regards