Nessus instead of NMAP?

Usage and Config
1

(imported topic written by rharmer91)

Has anyone used Nessus to gather data for Unmanaged assets instead of NMAP?

2

(imported comment written by BenKus)

Hey rharmer,

We have example integration code that uses Nessus instead of NMAP to do the Unmanaged Asset scan to find unmanaged computers, routers, printers, etc. The nice thing about the Nessus scan is that it returns vulnerability information also. Unfortunately, since Nessus is now closed source, it limits our integration options at this time. You can still make it work, but it requires more work on your end. We have integration examples at http://support.bigfix.com/bes/misc/unmanagedassets.html

If you haven’t had a chance to play with it much, the current implementation of NMAP works very well for customers according to the feedback we have received. Once you have the “BES Asset Discovery” site subscribed, all the work is done for you and you only need to choose your scan points and your scan options. We had one customer who was concerned about wireless devices in their branch stores (they had several thousand branches with several tens of thousands of computers) and they started using BES Asset Discovery one morning and so they put a scan point on each relay and ran a full scan of their enterprise (in parallel). By the late afternoon, they had a list of a few dozen unauthorized wireless access points and they also has picked up several hundred computers that they never knew existed.

More information about BES Asset Discovery is here: http://support.bigfix.com/bes/sites/assetdiscovery.html

Ben

3

(imported comment written by mundus91)

Ben,

I tried to follow the link you give to the sample Nessus integration, but nothing is there. Can you post a new link?

Thanks.

Craig

4

(imported comment written by BenKus)

Hey Craig,

There was a “.” at the end of the URL and this forum software doesn’t handle trailing periods very well. Here is the link:

http://support.bigfix.com/bes/misc/unmanagedassets.html

Ben

5

(imported comment written by makousks91)

I would like to do this type of import for managed devices on our network.

Can we get the exe modified to add this info to a new tab, called Nessus?

We do scans as part of our auditing and would like to store them centally in BigFix and eventually report on them and tie them to patch status and some other analsys we are running.

6

(imported comment written by makousks91)

Also,

It seems to overwrite the scan info from previous imports.

IE: I uploaded a nbe file containing about 15 servers, then uploaded one with 2 additional servers and only the last 2 are in the unmanaged tab. The other 15 are gone.