The Nessus Audit files consist of custom XML-based rules which are needed to perform configuration audit for various platforms. These files allow the user to perform value and regex-based comparisons of the current configuration and determine the gaps present. In general, it is expected that these audit files are prepared in line with the industry standard baselines so that the actual compliance gaps are shown and the administration team can work on hardening and compliance at the same time. A custom audit file is to be saved with the extension .audit.
The following is a generic syntax of a check in the audit files:
<item> name : " " description : " " info : " " value : " "</item> ...
