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Nessus

Tenable

Commercial vulnerability scanner — broad plugin library and compliance audits.

Vulnerability Management Commercial Platform / Suite Practiced in lab Cross-platform
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Cyber Kill Chain & Defender Lifecycle

Attacker — Kill Chain
1 Reconnaissance
2 Weaponization
3 Delivery
4 Exploitation
5 Installation
6 Command & Control
7 Actions on Objectives
Defender — IR Lifecycle
8 Preparation
9 Detection & Analysis
10 Containment, Eradication & Recovery
11 Post-Incident Activity

Description

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.

Use cases

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