---
title: "Scans Overview"
url: "https://dm0bkdes5q7a2ls.productfruits.help/en/article/scans-overview"
language: "en"
last_updated: "2026-09-15T20:16:16.860Z"
---

# Scans Overview

The Scans screen is where you view, create, and manage your scans. Scans are the searches that Agents perform on Targets to find either the file locations or find specific data types within the file and folder locations.

## What are Scans?

Scans are the searches that Agents perform on Targets to find either the file locations or find specific data types within the file and folder locations.

The **Scans** screen is where you view, create, and manage your scans.

![](https://cdn-assets.productfruits.com/dd095ef5-0f79-482e-bdb7-359112cec155)

> **Note**: During the process of creating a new scan you must select a playbook. If you have not created a playbook, you must create one. You cannot perform a scan of your Targets without a playbook. See Add a New Scan Playbook.

In the **Spirion Sensitive Data Platform (SDP)**, **Scans** are automated, policy-driven discovery operations that inspect systems, storage repositories, and files to locate and classify sensitive data.

### What Are They Used For?

Scans provide visibility and repeatability across an organization's digital footprint so teams can reduce risk and maintain regulatory compliance based on concrete findings rather than assumptions:

-   **Discovering Sensitive Data:** Uncover structured and unstructured sensitive information such as PII (Personally Identifiable Information), PHI (Protected Health Information), PCI (Payment Card Industry data), credentials, and custom organizational data types.
-   **Locating Data Sprawl:** Identify sensitive data residing in forgotten or unauthorized locations across endpoints, network shares, email accounts, cloud repositories, and databases.
-   **Risk Reduction & Remediation:** Provide the evidence required to clean up, quarantine, redact, or enforce access controls on sensitive files.
-   **Continuous Compliance:** Enable scheduled and repeatable audit-ready discovery across the enterprise.

### What Do Scans Do & How Do They Work?

A scan in Spirion SDP operates as an end-to-end pipeline broken down into several stages:

1.  **Target Enumeration & Scope Definition**
2.  -   Configured via the **Console** (the control plane), where administrators define *what to find* (policies, match rules, detectors) and *where to look* (Targets such as Windows/macOS/Linux endpoints, file shares, mailboxes, or databases).
3.  **Deep Content Inspection (Search Agents)**
4.  -   **Discovery Agents** connect to target systems, enumerate files/locations, and feed work items into local queues.
    -   **Search Agents** perform deep content inspection using text extraction, Optical Character Recognition (OCR for images/documents), and validation algorithms to minimize false positives.
5.  **Resilient Ingestion & Persistence**
6.  -   Results are queued and transferred via shipper processes through a network boundary to the ingestion service and backend message streaming (Kafka) and database storage. This decoupled structure ensures transient network disruptions do not cause scans to fail or restart from scratch.
7.  **Visibility & Actionable Reporting**
8.  -   The Console ingests scan findings and presents dashboards, match breakdowns, and risk scores so administrators and compliance teams can review matches and initiate remediation workflows.

## Scans Types

-   **Discovery Scan** 
-   -   Search for files and folders at different locations.
-   **Sensitive Data Scan**
-   -   Search for files and folders at different locations and take actions on them based on the [playbook](https://docs.spirion.com/Content/Sensitive%20Data%20Platform/Platform/Resources/Glossary%20of%20Terms.htm#Playbook) rule defined for them.