6connect has been building out innovative Connectors that leverage best of breed technologies and integrate them into 6connect ProVision. We have been testing a new integration with Nessus in a few environments and have decided to roll this out as an official integration. While we are still in the “beta” phase, we have a few production deployments under our belt and really see some potential.
Some Backstory
The Nessus Vulnerability Scanner by Tenable Network Security is the most widely deployed security scanner in the world. 6connect is excited to announce full integration between the ProVision network automation platform and Nessus’ suite of network scanning and identification tools. By utilizing the 6connect ProVision Nessus Connector, customers can take advantage of Nessus to identify unexpected changes to their network topology proactively.
About Nessus
Tenable Network Security is dedicated to creating the best and most thorough security compliance tool available today, and Nessus is their core product. Used by over 75,000 organizations worldwide, Nessus allows Security Engineers to verify network integrity, test against known vulnerabilities, and confirm patch levels on key software services.
Nessus helps growing networks to keep up with an ever-changing landscape of network vulnerabilities, and Tenable’s feed-based plugin distribution system allows operations to stay ahead of problems as new issues come to light.
Automation is the Key
Managing a global network is hard, and it only gets harder as environments scale up. Keeping track of network resources eats up an increasing amount of time as spreadsheet or wiki-based management techniques grow to an unmanageable size, and fall out of date almost as fast. Only with constant automated vigilance can Network Engineers keep the bits flowing smoothly – this is where 6connect ProVision and Nessus are a natural fit. Both tools are dedicated to improving network organization, performance, and integrity, and both tools operate as flexible platforms which can be tailored to the custom needs of individual organizations.
So How Does it Work?
With ProVison providing the bridge between 6connect’s centralized network planning and Nessus’ automated network discovery, our platform is uniquely positioned to assist network architects in designing AND enforcing correct network policies. Through ProVision’s ever-growing library of Connectors, users can take advantage of useful third-party functionality from a single centralized API. Also, ProVision can serve as the normalized API endpoint for nmap and/or Nessus functions depending on what is needed.
Here is an sample use case of how the ProVision and the Nessus Connector work together:
- Setup ProVision with your IP aggregates (public, private, overlapping, etc.) You can then import IP data tagged to individual aggregates.
- Sync aggregates with the Nessus agent(s) on your network.
- Nessus discovery agents (single or multiple agents supported) are configured to scan their respective subnets on a specified frequency.
- Nessus scan results per aggregate are shown in the ProVision IPAM Tab in addition to details in the IPAM Manage modal window (including host count, etc.)
- Notifications/alerts based on scan results related to “unassigned IPs” is configurable. By default, enabling the Nessus Connector adds a column in the IPAM/IPAM Manage screens that link to the detailed search results. This allows for a simple alerting mechanism if you identify rogue devices on your network in your IP space.
We are excited about this integration and will be adding it to production code in the next release (5.1.0). If you have any questions, or would like to talk shop with our engineers, please call us at 650-646-2206 or email info@6connect.com.
