The present embodiments provide a method and system for rapidly scanning a file, wherein the method includes obtaining a data packet, the data packet comprising secure file characteristic information for determining whether a file in a system is a secure file, and scanning file characteristic information of files in the system one by one, if the currently scanned file characteristic information matches secure file characteristic information in the data packet identifying a file as a secure file, skipping an anti-virus scanning for the current file, and continuing to scan a next file. By using the data packet, when a new user performs a first scanning, a file with identical characteristic information as that in the data packet can be skipped, which can reduce the time for the first scanning.