stopScan

Stopscan is a generic term used in software systems to describe the controlled termination of an ongoing scanning operation. It is not tied to a single product but appears across vulnerability scanners, asset discovery tools, data-indexing pipelines, and network monitoring suites.

Purpose and scope: Stopscan provides a way to halt a scan gracefully, preserving progress where possible and releasing resources such as threads, file handles, and network connections. It is used during manual user intervention or automated workflows when a scan is no longer needed or must be paused for policy or safety reasons.

Mechanisms: Implementations typically rely on cooperative cancellation tokens, stop signals, or API-based stop requests. The scanning process periodically checks for the stop condition and, on receipt, completes the current unit of work, writes any available partial results, performs cleanup, and then exits. In distributed systems, a cancellation message or token can propagate to multiple workers to stop in a coordinated fashion.

Behavior and limitations: Stopping a scan may produce partial results and require reconciliation later. Depending on design, some operations may be aborted mid-step, potentially leaving incomplete data or open resources. Proper logging and audit trails help trace stop events.

History and standards: The concept predates modern cloud services and is implemented in numerous tools with varying semantics. There is no universal standard for stopscan, and term usage can vary by ecosystem.

See also: cancellation token, interrupt signal, cooperative cancellation, soft kill, hard kill.