Free CompTIA Security+ SY0-701 Practice Question

A false positive is when a security system incorrectly identifies benign activity as malicious. In the context of vulnerability scans, a false positive would be a situation where the scanner reports a vulnerability that does not actually exist on the scanned system. Understanding the difference between false positives and false negatives is important for security analysts when prioritizing and addressing reported vulnerabilities. False negatives are indeed a concern because they represent actual vulnerabilities that were missed by the scan, thus leaving the system at risk. Coincidentally reported vulnerabilities do not have a specific term since it would either be a correct report or one of the aforementioned terms. Importantly, a non-issue does not refer to this concept and is not a term commonly used in vulnerability scanning.