Example: File Server Scan - Finance Department

To help clarify how Custom Folder settings work in a real-world scenario, below is a practical example of a Finance Department File Server scan.

The Scenario

You are a Security Engineer tasked with scanning a Windows File Server named FIN-SRV-01.

• The server has a 2TB D: drive.
• There is a specific folder D:\Finance\Payroll that is shared out to the team as \\FIN-SRV-01\Payroll.
• The server uses Volume Shadow Copies for daily backups.
• The Finance team has a mapped drive (M:) pointing to a legacy archive on a different server.

How the Settings Change the Scan

If you configure the Scan Wizard with the following settings, here is what happens:

1. Include: \\FIN-SRV-01\Payroll (Basic Options page) and "Allow Scan for Non-Admin Shares" (Advanced Options page)

• The Result: Spirion connects directly to the Payroll share. It ignores the rest of the D: drive (like the D:\System Volume Information or D:\Users folders).
• Why: Because you used a non-admin share name and enabled the setting, Spirion stays focused only on the data the Finance team actually uses.

2. "Only Scan Local Drives" = Enabled

• The Result: Spirion scans everything inside the Payroll folder on the local D: drive. However, it completely ignores the M: drive (the legacy archive).
• Why: Even though the M: drive is visible on the server, it is a "Network Map." By enabling this, you prevent the Agent from "jumping" to another server and scanning data that isn't actually on FIN-SRV-01.

3. "Scan Shadow Volumes" = Disabled

• The Result: Spirion scans the current, live versions of the payroll spreadsheets. It does not look at the snapshots from yesterday or last week.
• Why: This keeps the scan fast. If you had enabled it, and there were 10 days of snapshots, Spirion would scan the same payroll files 11 times (1 live + 10 snapshots), likely timing out the scan.

4. "Skip Offline Files" = Enabled

• The Result: If the Finance team uses OneDrive Shortcut folders inside that Payroll share, Spirion will see the file names but will not download them from the cloud to scan them.
• Why: This prevents the server's hard drive from suddenly filling up with "hydrated" cloud data during the scan.

5. "Follow Junctions" = Disabled

• The Result: If there is a shortcut folder in Payroll called Old_Records that actually points to a folder on the C: drive, Spirion will skip it.
• Why: This ensures the scan stays within the boundaries of the D:\Finance path you intended to search and doesn't accidentally start wandering into the System/OS drive.

6. Defaults

• Use the default values for the rest of the Custom Folder settings.

Summary of the "Ideal" Setup for this Example