Automated recurring scans and email reporting for WordPress

It’s essential to regularly scan a WordPress powered website for malware and viruses and get scheduled reports. Cerber Security Scanner allows you to easily configure your schedule for automated recurring scanning and automatic malware removal.

Once the schedule is configured, the scanner automatically scans the website and sends an email report with the results of the scan. All recurring scans are launched and controlled by our cloud scanning servers.

The Quick Scan can be launched as often as one time per hour, so you can enable up to 24 scans per day. The Full Scan can be launched only once a day at a specified time.

After every scan, the scanner creates a report that is generated based on settings in the Scan results reporting section.

Configure scheduled website scans

Click the WP Cerber / Site Integrity menu, then click the Scheduling tab.

In the Automated recurring scan schedule section, you set up your schedule. Select the desired frequency of the Quick Scan and specify the time of the Full Scan. By default, all automated recurring scans are turned off.

The Scan results reporting section is about reporting. Here you can easily and flexibly configure conditions for generating and sending reports.

Scheduled malware scan settings

What issues would you like to include in an email report?

An email report will only include issues that match any of the selected types in the Report an issue if any of the following is true filter. So this setting works as a filter for issues you want to get in a report. The report will only be sent if there are issues to report and the following, a selected option is true.

When does the scanner send an email report to you?

The second condition is configured with the Send email report setting. The report will be sent if a selected option is true:

After any scan means always send a report after every scan if there are issues to report about. You may get up to 24 emails per day.
If any changes in scan results occurred means something has changed in a set of issues you’ve selected in the setting above.
If new issues detected means to send a report only if new issues have been found during a scan. Other changes don’t affect sending reports. For instance, if a size of a file is changing from scan to scan, you will be notified only once when this issue occurs for the first time. This option is the most restrictive.

For the last two options, the scanner compares the results of two consecutive scans. Quick Scan and Full Scan are compared separately.

Note: if you’ve enabled reporting Content has been modified or/and New file, you have to enable Monitor modified files and Monitor new files on the Settings tab accordingly.

Additional notification settings

An example of еру email report sent by the WordPress malware scanner

An example of the email report sent by the Cerber Security malware scanner

To include additional details in email reports enable Include file sizes or/and Include scan errors settings. The last option will include all server, database and input/output errors that occur during a scan. It may be helpful to diagnose technical problems.

To send a scan report the scanner uses an email address from the Email Address field in the malware scanner settings. If you leave this field empty, the scanner will use an email address from the notification settings. If the email field in the notification settings is empty too, the scanner uses an email address from General WordPress Settings for the website (Settings -> General -> Email Address).

Technical details

Once you’ve configured settings for the automated recurring scan, the set of scan parameters are transmitted to Cerber Tech cloud scanning servers. The servers launch scheduled scans and control the whole process of scanning. The parameters include the website URL, the schedule of the scan, and the email address for reporting. No data any kind is transmitted from the scanned website to the cloud servers. That means the results of a scan are remain private and do not leave a website.

If your website is not accessible from the Internet, automated recurring scans cannot be launched.

Know more about the malware scanner

How to use Cerber Security Scanner for WordPress

What Cerber Security Scanner scans and detects

Automatic cleanup of malware and file recovery

Cerber Security Scanner Settings explained

Troubleshooting malware scanner issues

What’s the scanner, anyway?

Cerber Security Scanner is a sophisticated and powerful tool that inspects every single file and every single folder on a website for traces of malware and backdoors, changed, and new suspicious files. The scanner verifies the integrity of WordPress, plugins, and themes and prevents them from being infected with unforeseen malware. When the scanner detects unauthorized changes, it automatically recovers affected files.

Have any questions?

If you have a question regarding WordPress security or WP Cerber, leave them in the comments section below or get them answered on the community forum.