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Software Engineering vocabulary · APIs, Networking and Security

Vulnerability scan

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

nounCommon term

In software engineering, vulnerability scan means: An automated check of systems, networks or applications that looks for known weaknesses, missing patches and insecure settings and lists them in a report.

In Turkish: zafiyet taraması, güvenlik açığı taraması

How it is used

Teams run or schedule vulnerability scans weekly or monthly with tools such as Nessus, Qualys or OpenVAS. A scan is automated and broad; a penetration test is manual and deeper. Authenticated scans log in to hosts and find more.

Example sentences

  1. The monthly vulnerability scan found 120 hosts missing last month's patches.

  2. Please exclude the production database from tonight's vulnerability scan.

Common collocations

  • run a vulnerability scan
  • authenticated scan
  • scan results
  • scheduled scan
  • external scan
  • vulnerabilityA weakness in software, hardware, a configuration or a process that an attacker could use to cause harm or to gain access they should not have.
  • penetration testAn authorised, simulated attack on a system, application or network, carried out by security specialists to find weaknesses before real attackers do.
  • patch managementThe ongoing process of finding, testing, approving and installing software updates across all systems, and tracking which ones are still missing.
  • CVSSCommon Vulnerability Scoring System: a standard method for rating how severe a vulnerability is, with a score from 0.0 to 10.0.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: APIs, Networking and Security

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