Question

Difficulty: MediumVulnerability Scanning and Assessment

A security team is experiencing severe performance degradation on production database servers whenever network-based vulnerability scans occur. The team must maintain comprehensive vulnerability visibility while eliminating operational disruption to high-traffic database services. Which of the following strategies should the security team implement to resolve this issue? (Select TWO.)

  1. Configure scan rate limits and throttle packet transmission speeds on the vulnerability scanner targeting production database subnets.Answer
  2. Deploy host-based vulnerability scanning agents on the database servers to collect local security metadata directly.Answer
  3. C
    Configure an inline network intrusion prevention system (NIPS) to automatically drop vulnerability scanner traffic when database load exceeds thresholds.
  4. D
    Switch to unauthenticated network port sweeps during peak operational hours to eliminate host authentication processing overhead.

Answer

The security team should configure scan rate limits on network scanners and deploy host-based scanning agents on database servers.
Configuring scan rate limiting reduces the frequency and density of network probes sent to production systems, preventing socket exhaustion and high CPU spikes. Concurrently, deploying host-based agents allows local inventory and vulnerability evaluation without relying on heavy network-based probing, achieving low-overhead auditing.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the operational issue causing database performance degradation.
Aggressive network port sweeps and concurrent connection attempts overload production host sockets and CPU resources.
Identifying the root cause distinguishes network scanning load from local database processing overhead.
2
Evaluate remediation techniques that reduce scan impact while maintaining visibility.
Throttling scanner packet rates prevents network flooding, and host-based agents run efficiently as background OS processes without network-intensive probing.
Combining rate limiting and agent-based auditing provides thorough vulnerability coverage without interrupting service availability.

Key Concept

Vulnerability Scanner Performance Optimization and Agent vs. Network-based Scanning
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