Plugins

The Advanced Scan templates include Plugin options.

Plugins options enable you to select security checks by Plugin Family or individual plugins checks.

For more information on specific plugins, see the Tenable plugins site. For more information on plugin families, see About Plugin Families on the Tenable plugins site.

Clicking on the Plugin Family allows you to enable (green) or disable (gray) the entire family. Selecting a family shows the list of its plugins. You can enable or disable individual plugins to create specific scans.

A family with some plugins disabled is blue and shows Mixed to indicate only some plugins are enabled. Clicking on the plugin family loads the complete list of plugins, and allow for granular selection based on your scanning preferences.

Selecting a specific Plugin Name shows the plugin output that you would see in a report.

The plugin details include a Synopsis, Description, Solution, Plugin Information, and Risk Information.

Note: When you create and save a scan or policy, it records all the plugins that you select initially. When Nessus receives new plugins via a plugin update, Nessus enables the new plugins automatically if the family they are associated with is enabled. If the family was disabled or partially enabled, Nessus also disables the new plugins in that family.

Caution: The Denial of Service family contains some plugins that could cause outages on a network if you do not enable the Safe Checks option, in addition to some useful checks that do not cause any harm. You can use the Denial of Service family with Safe Checks to ensure that Nessus does not run any potentially dangerous plugins. However, Tenable recommends that you do not use the Denial of Service family on a production network unless scheduled during a maintenance window and with staff ready to respond to any issues.