Learn what exclusions are and why it is important to have them. Understand how exclusions are handled with VIPRE. Includes recommendations on how to determine what exclusions you may need in your environment.

What exclusions are and why have them

Exclusions are lists of items such as files, domains, and processes that VIPRE should ignore; in essence, telling VIPRE what not to scan.

Certain types of software can be impacted by antivirus programs. Some software may experience strange behavior. For example, processes may be blocked by the antivirus programs based on behavior traits exhibited by the software; file lock contention may occur during scans; and so on. This is especially common with certain categories of software such as server software, databases, data backup, key loggers, and more that either require exclusive access to specific files or that use files that, although benign, contain patterns that antivirus software sees as suspicious.

How exclusions work

Exclusions are communicated from VIPRE Cloud to the agents as part of the policy. As the agents protect your devices, the exclusions are applied.

VIPRE provides an initial set of exclusions that is applied to all devices for resources that we know to be potential issues. Our own virus definition files, for example, would lead VIPRE to believe it had found malware if it were not excluded.

Administrators can create custom exclusions to accommodate the specific needs of their organization. Exclusions are defined in an exclusion list. That list is then associated to one or more policies (scope=policy). Alternatively, a list may be associated to all devices (scope=site).

Exclusion lists provide the flexibility to define exclusions once, and apply them to as many policies as required.

How to know what to exclude

Knowing what needs to be excluded from antivirus is not always intuitive. Sometimes VIPRE will tell you it blocked a process or quarantined a file that you know to be benign; in this case you can simply add that program or file to the exclusion list. In other cases, however, software may not work correctly for non-obvious reasons.

When first deploying, consider the following

• test - deploy to a group of test devices for your environment
• monitor - perform normal activity on the test systems to determine if VIPRE blocks or impacts application behavior - you may need to disable VIPRE to determine if it is the cause of any observed odd behavior
• research - look for vendor recommendations for third-party software used in your organization. Some vendors maintain a specific list of resources to exclude for antivirus programs. For example, Microsoft maintains a Microsoft Anti-Virus Exclusion List for their software. 

Predefined and custom exclusions

Exclusions are viewed and managed from the Exclusions page. Custom lists can be created for Windows and Mac policies. For Windows based policies, a VIPRE Known list is provided.

• VIPRE Known - read-only exclusions for Windows OS that come with VIPRE Cloud, curated by the VIPRE Team. VIPRE manages both the default VIPRE Base Exclusions and VIPRE Server Exclusions lists. We push out additions to these exclusions that work across our entire customer base.
• Custom - any lists of exclusions that you create 

Your instance of VIPRE Cloud comes with VIPRE Base Exclusions, which applies to all of your Windows devices. Additionally, VIPRE Server Exclusions is automatically assigned to Windows Servers (through the Windows Servers policy, one of the default policies included with VIPRE Cloud).

As suggested in this article, the need to create custom exclusions is common practice when using antivirus software. When adding exclusions, be sure to follow your vendors' specific recommendations. Note however that excluding resources at a higher level than what is recommended can be a security exposure. For example, do not exclude items at the directory, or folder, level when the vendor lists specific files in the folder.