Everything you need to get started with vulnerability scanning, from concepts to a production deployment About This Book * Learn to integrate scanning data into your security operation center through a security analyst's perspective * Take a walk through the tool to get a full production deployment * Use the concepts learned throughout this easy and intuitive guide in a real-life production environment Who This Book Is For This book is for security analysts or security engineers who are involved in or responsible for vulnerability scanning in their organization. It also caters to engineers who are embarking on developing a vulnerability life cycle management program from the ground up. What You Will Learn * Understand why vulnerability scanning is important and learn the common concepts of vulnerability scans * Install the Nexpose appliance on a local machine using Virtual Box * Personalize the vulnerability scanner, and calculate risks based on your company's needs * Organize sites and assets on Nexpose depending on your company's footprint and layout * Run vulnerability scans using Nexpose and configure different scan engines depending on the infrastructure and architecture * Interpret and understand the results of the vulnerability scan * Use Exploit Exposure-a feature that provides a measurement of the exposure to potential exploits found in a vulnerability scan * Integrate the Nexpose scan data with Security Incident Event Management (SIEM) to get a greater understanding of the thread landscape In Detail Nexpose is one of the best tools among Security Assessment Tools and Risk Management Software. It helps you curb data breaches by identifying the weak points, prioritizing what matters most, and improving the security outcomes by a large margin. Rapid7 Nexpose is the industry-leading vulnerability management solution and has received many awards. Unlike other solutions that burden the network with multiple scans, Nexpose's fast, unified security and compliance assessment improves the performance of your security program by giving you a complete risk and compliance posture. This practical guide starts by introducing you to vulnerabilities, how they are scanned, and the life cycle of vulnerabilities. We then explore the tools, features, and capabilities, and compare Nexpose with the other tools available. We will then walk you through the different parts of the user interface. After that, we will dive into assets and their discoveries on a site as well as configuring them for a real-world scenario. You will then run your first scans, a distributed scan, and a targeted scans, as well as credential scans and elevated permission scans. Moving on, we will see how to analyze the results of your scans, including risk classification and prioritization. The latter half of the book covers the Exploit Exposure testing feature in Nexpose, along with the importance of integrating vulnerability scan data into SIEMs. Finally, you'll get your Nexpose deployment and production ready.