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5.1.2 Proactive, active and reactive security

Vulnerability scanners form the proactive component and draw the attention to the weak parts of the system that need extra attention before it is too late. They allow a security manager to make trade-offs between performance and residual risk. Apart from registering and interpreting activity on the protected systems in real-time -- its active behaviour -- the framework allows for the automatic invocation of appropriate countermeasures at the time of a perceived break-in attempt -- the system's reactive behaviour. It may even be able to learn from the actions that it takes to handle future attacks more effectively.



(c) 1998, Filip Schepers