Windows – How often should we virus scan our computers

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We are just in the final stages of finishing our AV management solution (McAfee ePO) and we are fine tuning our client policies.

How often should we have our client PC's & Macs run a system scan?

I know some people advocate daily scanning, but the anti virus client has real time scanning and with our management system, we immediately pick up disabled, non functioning or out of date AV clients, so is there a need to scan very often?

Furthermore how often should we scan our file server, with our users network drives/profiles – if ever?

Best Answer

I believe you have other factors to consider.

  • How often are the PCs left switched on when not in use?
  • Are the PCs used 24/7, or do they sit idle for 16 hours a day?
  • Does your AV software's real time scanning, scan on change only, or all reads/writes? (or not at all?) - How reliable is it?
  • Will your AV software reschedule a missed scan because a computer is switched off?
  • Who is using the computer? (Single user / Multi user)?
  • How much do you trust the people using the computers?
  • How much data is stored on each computer (hopefully none, as it should all be on the network)
  • Do any users have elevated rights on the systems?

Personally, here I perform daily overnight scans (when a PC is left on). But I think that suits our set up. All our machines are dataless (so there isn't a lot of scanning required on each machine), and PCs are mostly switched off when not in use anyway. The answer is probably subjective IMHO.

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