I opened case 5132689 with support and they called me back within a few minutes. Long story short, there is a workaround for managed clients but not for unmanaged clients. These are the steps he told me to perform on SEPM for managed clients, although we have to go through change management process to deploy the changes in our environment and this wouldn't occur until at least next week.
For reference, at the time of this writing our SEPM version is 12.1.2100.2093, and my unmanaged client is version 12.1.3001.165.
1) Policies > Virus and Spyware Protection. Find a policy which is in use (Location Use count is non-zero). Double-click the policy. Windows Settings > Scheduled Scans > Administrator-Defined Scans > Advanced Tab > Startup and Triggered Scans. Disable the ‘Run an Active Scan when new definitions arrive’ option. Click OK.
2) Now switch from the Windows Settings > Scheduled Scans > Administrator-Defined Scans area to the Windows Settings > Advanced Options > Quarantine. Set Quarantine to ‘Do Nothing’. Click OK.
3) Repeat steps 1-2 for any additional policies which may be in use.
4) Click Clients, then pick a group > Policies > Location-independent Policies and Settings > Settings > Communications Settings > Download Randomization. Ensure that the ‘Enable Randomization’ is checked.Click OK. If the settings are grayed out, the settings are inherited from the parent container, keep going up the client tree until you find settings which aren't grayed out.
5) Repeat step 4 for any other groups where settings may be configured.
Although he provided me the link to download the SymRmvScan utility, and I did extract it, he advised it will have no effect on my concern.