Vulnerability scanning is used to proactively identify security vulnerabilities of computing systems in a network. Which option best reflects this definition?

• A. The automated process of proactively identifying security vulnerabilities of computing systems in a network.
• B. The manual testing of application source code for defects.
• C. The process of logging user access events.
• D. The procedure for incident containment.

Answer: (A)

Vulnerability scanning focuses on automatically scanning networked computing systems to proactively uncover security weaknesses before they can be exploited. The best answer captures this automated, proactive approach across the network, which is exactly what vulnerability scanning does with tools that assess hosts for missing patches, misconfigurations, and known vulnerabilities. It isn’t about manually testing code, which is static code analysis; it isn’t about logging access events, which is monitoring and auditing; and it isn’t about containing an incident, which is part of incident response.