Nessus (Tenable) is the industry-standard commercial vulnerability scanner. The CySA+ exam frequently references Nessus output and the broader Tenable.io / Tenable.sc workflow.

What an analyst gets out of Nessus:

• Plugin-driven detections updated daily (CVE, default credentials, missing patches, misconfigurations).
• Compliance audits against CIS, DISA STIG, PCI-DSS using .audit files.
• Credentialed scans that authenticate with SSH/SMB/WinRM for much more accurate results.
• CVSS scoring + VPR (Tenable's Vulnerability Priority Rating) help prioritise remediation.

• Quarterly vulnerability assessments
• Pre-deployment hardening verification
• PCI-DSS internal compliance scans
• Credentialed scans against domain-joined Windows fleets