What is the role of Nessus in vulnerability assessment?

• A. It is a firewall.
• B. It is a vulnerability scanning tool.
• C. It is a malware detector.
• D. It is an intrusion prevention system.

Answer: (B)

Vulnerability assessment relies on tools that automatically find weaknesses in systems that could be exploited. Nessus does exactly that by scanning hosts, services, and configurations against a large and regularly updated database of known vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and policy checks. It uses plugins to verify whether specific CVEs or exposure patterns exist on the target environment, then delivers a report that shows what was found, how severe it is, and how to fix it. This makes it the ideal choice for identifying vulnerabilities across a network, rather than performing traffic filtering like a firewall, detecting malware on devices, or blocking intrusions in real time like an intrusion prevention system.