A vulnerability assessment is a systematic process of identifying security weaknesses in systems, networks, and applications. You’re looking for holes – misconfigurations, outdated software, weak credentials, unpatched services. The goal is to find problems before the bad guys do.

Think of it like a home inspection before you buy a house. An inspector walks through and documents everything that’s broken or at risk.

Vulnerability scanning is automated. You point a tool at a target and it runs checks looking for known issues. It’s fast, it’s systematic, and it doesn’t try to exploit anything.

Part of the free Intro to Cyber course by Cover6 Solutions.