What is a vulnerability?

A vulnerability is a security hole in a piece of software, hardware or operating system that provides a potential angle to attack the system. A vulnerability can be as simple as weak passwords or as complex as buffer overflows or SQL injection vulnerabilities.

To test if you have any vulnerabilities in your systems, you typically use a vulnerability management solution, also known as a vulnerability scanner or vulnerability assessment solution. If you would like to get your hands on a free vulnerability scanner, try NeXpose Community Edition, one of Metasploit’s sister projects.

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