Running a Scan

Modified on Wed, 7 May at 10:29 AM

Starting a scan

When you have added one or more items to the work queue, you can start a scan by clicking the Scan icon in the top left corner of the dashboard, then clicking the Launch Scan button.


The ideal scan cadence depends on the size of the organisation, their risk profile/appetite and remediation frequency. Scans should be run regularly to monitor for new or changed assets, misconfigurations, and remediation progress.

General best practice recommendations are as follows:

Risk Level

Recommended Scan Frequency

High-risk (e.g., financial services, healthcare, tech firms, or frequently changing environments)

Monthly for overall scan, daily to weekly for specific parts of the organisation 

Moderate-risk (most medium-sized enterprises)

Monthly

Low-risk (small, stable organizations with minimal internet-facing assets)

Monthly to quarterly


Monitoring scan progress

Once a scan is running, you can monitor its progress in the Jobs Module. Click on the Jobs Icon in the left-hand navigation pane to open this page.


The Jobs Module is an activity log and task monitoring centre. Whether tracking active tasks or investigating failures, the Jobs Module is your window on everything currently running or previously executed. It provides transparency into the automated and background processes across the platform. Scan work queue items can be updated and modified even while the scan is running.

Each scan is listed in the Jobs Module’s tabular view, which displays nine columns that provide detailed metadata and diagnostics for every job. Users can sort and filter jobs via the Column Headings, as well as filter jobs based on job type, status, or parameters via the search bar.


 

Jobs Column Heading

Description

Job Type

Specifies what kind of task was run:

  • tra: Discovery scan 
  • tre: Export
  • trc: Comparison

Created At

The timestamp when the job was triggered

Status

Current state of the job: Pending, Executing, Failed, Completed, Aborted, or Abort Requested

Exited At

Timestamp when the job completed or stopped

Failure Exit Code

A numeric/error code indicating why a job failed (if applicable)

Failure Exit Description

A human-readable message explaining the error or failure reason

Duration

How long the job took to complete

Abort Requested At

When a user manually requested termination (if applicable)

Args

Displays the parameters passed during job execution (contextual details)


From this page, you can see when scans have completed and when they have failed or are stuck in a ‘pending’ status.

When scans show as ‘Completed’, you can proceed to reviewing the scan items.

Troubleshooting

When a job fails, three fields are critical for diagnostics:

  • Failure Exit Code:
    1. Example: 1002, 503, etc.
    2. Useful for matching known errors
  • Failure Exit Description:
    1. Example: "DNS resolution failed" or "File export path not found"
    2. Offers context for users or support teams
  • Args:
    1. Shows what inputs were passed when the job ran
    2. Helps replicate or understand edge-case conditions

Share these values with your support or engineering team for fast resolution of recurring issues.

Stopping a scan

Scans that are pending or in progress can be terminated immediately by clicking on the Scan Icon and selecting ‘abort’.  Note that all results to this point are kept but no further scanning is done.

A screenshot of a web page

AI-generated content may be incorrect.

A scan may be aborted by a user for several reasons, including:

  • Typographical errors
  • Incorrect domains
  • While rare, the scanner might return a large volume of false positives, ie domains that are not considered in scope. This can occur, for example, when an organisation divests of a subsidiary, but DNS records and so on are not updated accordingly.

See also: 

  • Working with Scan Results (options for starting/re-starting scans)

 

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