In Bitdefender 2018, the Advanced Threat Defense and Antivirus feature allow you to configure exclusions for trusted applications, which means that these apps will not be scanned and are not going to get automatically blocked if they perform malware-like actions.
At the same time, the Safe Files gives you the possibility to choose which applications may change or delete your protected files.
Adding Antivirus Exclusions
Bitdefender allows the exclusion of specific files, folders or file extensions from scanning.
To add any of them to the Exclusions list, follow the steps explained below:
1. Open the Bitdefender program and go to the Protection windows.
2. Click the VIEW FEATURES link.
3. Select the Settings icon in the upper-right corner of the ANTIVIRUS module.
4. Select the Exclusions tab.
5. Click on the List of files and folders excluded from scanning as per the menu.
6. Click the Add button.
7. Click Browse and select the folder that you want to be excluded from scanning. Make sure it’s excluded from Both on-demand scanning and on-access scanning.
8. Click Add to save the changes and close the window.
Bitdefender 2018 also allows you to exclude file extensions from scanning. When excluded, files with those extensions will no longer be scanned by Bitdefender.
To exclude file extensions from scanning:
1. Click the List of extensions excluded from the scanning accordion menu.
2. Click the Add button.
3. Enter the extensions that you want to be excluded from scanning, separating them with semicolons (;). Here is an example: txt;avi;jpg. Again, make sure the extensions are excluded from Both on-demand scanning and on-access scanning.
Adding a process to the Advanced Threat Defense exclusions list.
You can configure exclusion rules for trusted applications so that Advanced Threat Defense does not block them if they perform malware-like actions.
NOTE: Advanced Threat Defense will continue to monitor excluded applications.
If an excluded application is detected to perform suspicious activities, the event will simply be logged and reported to Bitdefender Cloud as a detection error. To start adding processes to the Advanced Threat Defense exclusions list, you must:
1. Open the main Bitdefender interface.
2. Go to the Protection window.
3. Click the VIEW FEATURES link.
4. Click the 
icon in the lower-right corner of the ADVANCED THREAT DEFENSE module.
5. In the WHITELIST window, click Add applications to the whitelist.
6. Find and select the application you want to be excluded, select its .exe file, then click OK.
7. To remove an entry from the list, click the Remove button next to it.