Explain the major difference points between nessus vs nmap.
What are the major differences between Nessus and NMAP in terms of Port scanning? Why can the Nessus Port scan not replace the NMAP port scan? While trying to find all the relevant details about both, I saw these lines - Nessus and Nmap, both tools are broadly used by the information security community. Nessus is a more complete tool and used as a de facto tool by professional security auditing agencies. Nmap tool is more used to identify open ports and services to identify the specific types of vulnerabilities.
To find out the comparative use between nessus vs nmap, I don't suggest that you use either. You need to develop your skills without the tools in order to know what to attack and how to attack it.
- The following books will get you started:
- Network Security Assessment, 3rd Edition
- Cyber Operations: Building, Defending, and Attacking Modern Computer Networks
- Python: Penetration Testing for Developers
- Mastering Kali Linux for Advanced Penetration Testing, 2nd Edition
- Metasploit Revealed: Secrets of the Expert Pentester
You must master the techniques without using the tools. Metasploit is a sort of technique-building framework, but you can also rely on it too-much if you don't learn the scripting or code-specific relevance to each module down to the details, not just the options or advanced options.
However, nmap can be modified to gain an understanding about an environment in terms of vulnerability, control efficiency, and deep security practice. I would recommend it over Nessus for every situation except for the Fire-and Forget situation. However, Fire-and Forget tends to provide a report with the wrong risks and a huge-variety of errors including false positives (which can be false-false positives if the expert driving does not know how to reduce false positives to the right problem sets) and false negatives.
Thus, I do also recommend (after the techniques are mastered) these books: Nmap: Network Exploration and Security Auditing Cookbook, 2nd Edition Mastering the Nmap Scripting Engine.