OpenVAS is a vulnerability scanner just like nessus and it stands for open vulnerability assessment scanner. Also, just like nessus, it will conduct port scans to find open services and ultimately lists vulnerabilities associated with the services as well as misconfigurations. All vulnerability reports need to be reviewed careflly for relevancy and false positives as they are common.
You activate openVAS by entering target information like an IP address or its range and selecting a scan type. OpenVAS has full scan, web server scan, wordpress scan, and joomla scan. When it comes to vulnerability scanners, there isn’t a single solution that provides 100% coverage, so it’s common to use multiple scanners within an organization. OpenVAS is a great additional scanner that can be used along with nessus to get a better picture and the two reports can be used to compare different solutions and results as well as make it easier to identiy false positivs and false negatives.
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