I have just heard about vulnerability scanning as something used to proactively strengthen the security of local networks. It might not be frequently used in home networks, but in larger companies it can come really useful. What does a vulnerability scanner really do?
It will check your network for weaknesses. You can almost think of it like a hacker-program that checks your network with the intention of finding weaknesses that potential intruders can take advantage of. But, instead of hurting you and your device, it will rather tell you about the weaknesses and help you stay safe and find solutions to those weaknesses before some evil hacker takes advantage of the same weakness.
Isn't that kind of interesting?
One such tool that is brilliant to use is OpenVAS for Linux. This is a fork built on the last version of Nessus in 2005, before it became a pay-to-use service.
I haven't used it yet, but I will hopefully get to try it very soon! :)