Microsoft® Windows® Security: Essentials

Auditing a Network with MBSA

The Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA) is a free tool provided by Microsoft. It checks computers for a wide assortment of known vulnerabilities to ensure that systems are secure. It then provides a report listing all the issues it discovered. As an administrator, you can investigate each of the issues and take steps to resolve them.

Many organizations implement compliance auditing to ensure that their systems comply with basic security requirements. For example, an organization may create a written security policy defining what systems or data it wants to protect. The company may then use various technologies to implement the protection requirements. Later, it will likely continue to update the systems to ...