Creating scan policies with Nessus

Nessus is one of the most powerful and comprehensive vulnerability scanners. By targeting a system or group of systems, Nessus will automatically scan for a large range of vulnerabilities on all identifiable services. Scan policies can be built in Nessus to more granularly define the types of vulnerabilities that Nessus tests for and the types of scans that are performed. This recipe will explain how to configure unique scan policies in Nessus.

Getting ready

To configure scan policies in Nessus, one must first have a functional copy of Nessus installed on the Kali Linux penetration testing platform. Because Nessus is a licensed product, it does not come installed by default in Kali. For more information on how to install Nessus in Kali, refer to the Installing Nessus on Kali Linux recipe in Chapter 1, Getting Started.

How to do it…

To configure a new scan policy in Nessus, you will first need to access the Nessus web interface at https://localhost:8834 or https...