Is there an ability to recognize remote connections (e.g. VPN) and disable/throttle scans to minimize user impact over low bandwidth connections?

Scans are typically running on build servers in the data center rather than on endpoints. Therefore, the impact for VPN connections is limited. The frequency of the scan can be controlled and additionally, scans can produce an offline result file which can be uploaded on demand as needed. See more here:

Unified Agent - Advanced Topics | Best-Practices-for-Offline-Mode-(Optional)