According to me the answer should start by explaining what is Passive check.
Passive checks are initiated and performed by external applications/processes and the Passive check results are submitted to Nagios for processing.
Now I will advise you to explain the need for Passive check.
Passive checks are useful for monitoring services that are Asynchronous in nature and cannot be monitored effectively by polling their status on a regularly scheduled basis. It can also be used for monitoring services that are Located behind a firewall and cannot be checked actively from the monitoring host.
