What is the InterCheck process that occasionally uses 96% CPU on my Mac?

Question

I heard my computer's fan spinning fast, so I checked Activity Monitor and saw that a process called InterCheck was using close to 96% CPU. What is this process and why's it using so much CPU?

In the Inspect window, it said that the parent process is launchd.

Answer 1

It's a real-time scanning process by Sophos Anti-Virus that scans your computer's running processes in the background.

The parent process is launchd so that when you accidentally kill the Intercheck process, it gets restarted.