Scan Methods

Security Agents can use one of two scan methods when scanning for security threats.

Smart scan: Security Agents that use smart scan are referred to as smart scan agents in this document. Smart scan agents benefit from local scans and in-the-cloud queries provided by File Reputation Services.
Conventional scan: Security Agents that do not use smart scan are referred to as conventional scan agents. A conventional scan agent stores all components on the endpoint and scans all files locally.

The following table provides a comparison between the two scan methods.

Table 1. Conventional Scan and Smart Scan Compared
Basis of Comparison	Conventional Scan	Smart Scan
Scanning behavior	The conventional scan agent performs scanning on the client.	The smart scan agent performs scanning on the client. If the Security Agent cannot determine the risk of the file during the scan, the Security Agent verifies the risk by sending a scan query to the Trend Micro Smart Protection Network. The Security Agent "caches" the scan query result to improve the scan performance.