Your organization uses Tenable.io for continuous monitoring of vulnerability status. You notice that several high-severity vulnerabilities remain 'open' despite being marked as 'patched' in your configuration management database. What is the most likely cause?
Trap 1: The Nessus scanner plugin needs an update to recognize the patch.
While possible, the most likely cause is the verification step failing during the scan cycle.
Trap 2: The scan policy is set to 'Discovery' instead of 'Audit'.
Discovery scans still identify open vulnerabilities; the policy type is less relevant than the scan sequence.
Trap 3: The scan agent was decommissioned prematurely.
If the agent were decommissioned, you would see a 'missing agent' alert, not an 'open' vulnerability.
- A
The Nessus scanner plugin needs an update to recognize the patch.
Why wrong: While possible, the most likely cause is the verification step failing during the scan cycle.
- B
The scan policy is set to 'Discovery' instead of 'Audit'.
Why wrong: Discovery scans still identify open vulnerabilities; the policy type is less relevant than the scan sequence.
- C
The scan agent was decommissioned prematurely.
Why wrong: If the agent were decommissioned, you would see a 'missing agent' alert, not an 'open' vulnerability.
- D
The vulnerability scan was not performed after the patch was applied.
Continuous monitoring requires validation scans to confirm patch effectiveness before updating the compliance status.