Bitdefender does anyone use this can provide exclusions that work?

Problem reported by digital.iway - 3/2/2026 at 3:57 PM

Submitted

I am using bitdefender on the server and having trouble with exclusions working correctly and wanted to know if anyone is using it can shed some light on this. windows 2019 server

it seems that Bitdefender’s behavioral engine (ATC, memory scanning, ransomware heuristics) seems to ignores wildcard folder exclusions. It does not ignore explicit folder paths from what I found and wildcards can be problematic but I want input.

This is what I had, but issues remained with some declude SNF services being collided with :

C:\SmarterMail\**
C:\Program Files (x86)\SmarterTools\**

I removed wild cards and now using these folder exclusions:
C:\SmarterMail\
C:\SmarterMail\Domains\
C:\SmarterMail\Declude\
C:\SmarterMail\Declude\SNF\
C:\Program Files (x86)\SmarterTools\SmarterMail\Service\

can anyone tell me if they had experience with bitdefender and what exclusions worked for them - wildcards or explicit paths?

Thank you in advance.

2 Replies

Reply to Thread

J. LaDow Replied

3/2/2026 at 7:06 PM

Consumer:

According to their forums and KB, sub-folders are automatically included when defining an exclusion: https://community.bitdefender.com/en/discussion/93848/how-do-i-know-if-subfolders-are-also-excluded-from-scans-for-any-given-path

Notes here that the protection engine should be switched off, changes made, then turned back on so that the new exclusions are loaded: https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/13427/

This seems to apply to commercial/on-premise:

https://www.bitdefender.com/business/support/en/77212-1180477-exclusions.html

MailEnable survivor / convert --

digital.iway Replied

3/3/2026 at 12:56 PM

Thank you for the info J. LaDow much appreciated.

I am checking with the data-center to see if they restarted the protection engine during the exception folder change. I do not have access unfortunately. With those exceptions in place I am still seeing procmon show the EPSecurityService.exe hitting the declude SNF process as shown in the screenshort below. I am wondering if that is normal with the exceptions in place or not or if the engine was not restarted and that declude/SNF scan by BD will stop after..

Back to Community Threads

Please leave this box unchecked

Reply to Thread

Enter the verification text