What is Nessus?

What is Nessus?

• A. A network firewall.
• B. Used to scan systems for software vulnerabilities.
• C. A SIEM tool.
• D. A password auditing tool.

Answer: (B)

Nessus is a vulnerability scanner. It helps security teams identify weaknesses by scanning systems, networks, and applications for known software vulnerabilities, missing patches, weak configurations, and policy gaps. Nessus uses a large set of plugins to check for specific CVEs and exposure indicators, and scans can be credentialed (with login) to perform deeper checks or non-credentialed to see what an attacker could discover from accessors without credentials. The results guide remediation by prioritizing issues with risk scores. This focus on uncovering vulnerabilities is different from a firewall (which blocks or permits traffic), a SIEM (which collects and analyzes security events), or a password auditing tool (which evaluates password policies and strength).

Nessus is a vulnerability scanner. It helps security teams identify weaknesses by scanning systems, networks, and applications for known software vulnerabilities, missing patches, weak configurations, and policy gaps. Nessus uses a large set of plugins to check for specific CVEs and exposure indicators, and scans can be credentialed (with login) to perform deeper checks or non-credentialed to see what an attacker could discover from accessors without credentials. The results guide remediation by prioritizing issues with risk scores. This focus on uncovering vulnerabilities is different from a firewall (which blocks or permits traffic), a SIEM (which collects and analyzes security events), or a password auditing tool (which evaluates password policies and strength).