Vulnerability Assessment Tools

TLDR: This chapter explains and demonstrates the different tools available for performing vulnerability assessments, and provides examples from the most common industry-leading tools on the market today.

Abstract: This chapter explains and demonstrates the different tools available for performing vulnerability assessments. It provides examples from the most common industry-leading tools on the market today. Vulnerability is defined as a software or hardware bug or misconfiguration that a malicious individual can exploit, thereby impacting a system's confidentiality and integrity. It is the assessment tool's job to identify these bugs and misconfigurations. A vulnerability assessment tool probes a system for a specific condition that represents vulnerability. Some tools operate by using an agent , which is a piece of software that must run on every system to be scanned; other tools operate without the use of agents, and some use a combination of the two configurations. The architecture of the scanning engines, agents, and systems will vary from product to product, but it is this architecture that affects overall scanning performance.