In order to perform this activity, you will have to satisfy the following prerequisites on your machine:

• You must have Nessus installed
• You must have network access to the hosts on which the scans are to be performed

In order to install Nesus, you can follow the instructions provided in Chapter 2, Understanding Network Scanning Tools. This will allow you to download a compatible version of Nessus and install all the required plugins. In order to check whether your machine has Nessus installed, open the search bar and search for Nessus Web Client. Once found and clicked, this will be opened in the default browser window:

If you are sure about Nessus being correctly installed, you can use the https://localhost:8834 URL directly from your browser to open the Nessus Web Client. If you are unable to locate the Nessus Web Client, you should remove and reinstall Nessus. For the removal of Nessus and installation instructions, refer to Chapter 2, Understanding Network Scanning Tools. If you have located the Nessus Web Client and are unable to open it in the browser window, you need to check whether the Nessus service is running in the Windows Services utility:

Furthermore, you can start and stop Nessus by using the services utility as per your requirements. In order further to confirm the installation using the command-line interface, you can navigate to the installation directory, where you will be able to see and access Nessus command-line utilities: