Right now it is automatic and hard coded although you could change the settings in the plugin. I will consider adding a setup function to the plugin although right now I’ve got so much paying work lined up, adding that is not on my radar, but that could change…
It checks times when any admin page is loaded (but not blog pages).
If it has been 10 minutes since the last scan action has happened, it tries to scan.
The scan process tries to find the next element (plugin, theme or core directory) to be scanned. It attempts to scan a specific element every 4 hours.
The idea behind this is that roughly every four hours, your install is being checked – but this is dependent on someone using the wordpress backend. It only scans one element at a time to make the impact on the user minimal.
Then, of course, there is the manual scan. You can go to Settings->Wordpress Sentinel and then click the Check Everything button and it will scan every element while you wait.
There is no email notification at this time.
Other suggestion:
add a setting to enable/disable automatic scan
for those who only want to make manual scan once in a while
