-: Scanning tools.
So I've mentioned two scanning tools for you already.
I've talked about QualysGuard and Nessus.
We're also gonna talk about Nexpose,
OpenVAS, Nikto web scanning engine,
and the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer.
So when we talk about QualysGuard,
I've shown you this picture already,
it is a great all around vulnerability scanner
and it is very very popular in the industry.
It will categorize things based on severity level,
you can do asset grouping and inventorying.
You can do a comparison of your scans,
and it has a great engine that does
a really good job of scanning your network,
and you can set these all up into different groups
and do them on a scheduled basis.
Now, one of their near peer competitors
is Tenable's Nessus vulnerability scanner.
And again, this is one I'm gonna show
you a walk through on because
this happens to be the one I use on my networks,
and Nessus is a good product.
It works really, really well.
And it is very comparable to QualysGuard
in every single way.
Everything you can do with QualysGuard,
you can pretty much do with Nessus as well.
The next one is Nexpose.
This one again, they all do pretty much the same thing,
this is just a different view point of it.
And a different graphical interface,
but it does do the same thing.
It will identify your scans.
It has a different looking dashboard,
but you can do this for inventory,
you can do port scans, you can do vulnerability scans,
all of that can be used in Nexpose.
Now why am I telling you all these different tools
instead of just saying pick one?
Because again, if you're trying to study
for the CSA+ exam, they may ask you a question on
which of these is not a vulnerability scanning tool?
And they'll list four tools.
And if they say Nessus, Nexpose, and QualysGuard,
you need to know that whatever else they list
is not a vulnerability scanning tool.
The next one here,
OpenVAS, this is the first open source scanner
that we're talking about.
And this means that it is very low cost to you
and so if you're trying to do this
on your home network, check out OpenVas.
It's a great little tool.
It does a lot of the same stuff that Nessus,
QualysGuard and Nexpose does, and it's fully open source
so you can actually go in there
and change things if you're so inclined.
And it does keep up to date very very well.
Nikto.
This one is a little bit different.
It is a vulnerability scanning tool,
but it specifically focuses on web applications.
So if you're trying to scan your e-commerce site
for vulnerabilities, you can use Nessus and those
to scan the databases themself,
but Nikto will actually go against some
of the coding of the web server.
And so it gives you a different perspective
and goes a little bit deeper,
specifically for web applications.
So you can use this as a supplemental scan
to your overall Nessus or QualysGuard
or Nexpose, or OpenVAS scans.
The next one we have, and the last one I'm gonna talk about
is Microsoft's Baseline Security Analyzer.
This one is actually run on the local machine itself,
so you can run it on your Windows server,
or Windows clients.
And this is an older picture here I'm showing you,
but it gives you about the same idea
of what the current one is.
The idea here with Microsoft Baseline
is it's gonna check and make sure
that you have your security updates done.
It's gonna check that nobody has messed with
your registry or your configuration files
since they were set up.
It's gonna do some hashing.
It's gonna make sure that your firewall's enabled.
It's gonna do a basic security test
for your system whether it's a client or a server.
It works well from a one off perspective
like for your home use.
But if you're gonna be looking at your whole network,
you're better off with a solution
such as Nessus or QualysGuard that's gonna do it
from a central scan point across the entire network.
And so those are just some vulnerability
management tools I just wanted you to see
and be familiar with them as we move forward
through this course.