Nessus vulnerability scanner 4.4.0 released

The Nessus vulnerability scanner features high-speed discovery, configuration auditing, asset profiling, sensitive data discovery and vulnerability analysis of your security posture. Nessus can also be used as a stand-alone scanner but requires a ProfessionalFeed subscription to be used commercially.

Nessus 4.4.0 is a major release and includes several new features and enhancements, including the addition of scan scheduling and enhanced reporting.

The GUI and web server have both been updated and will be released through the plugin feed.

The enhancements included in the plugin feed will be backward compatible with Nessus 4.2, and some of the new features will be available in Nessus 4.2 via the plugin feed update. However all users are strongly encouraged to upgrade to the latest version to take advantage of all the new features.

• A brand new reporting engine produces improved reports. Two new HTML reports have been added: a detailed plugin report (results displayed by plugin / vulnerability) and an “Executive Summary” report that summarizes the top 10 most vulnerable hosts on the network.
• Scan scheduling has been added for Nessus ProfessionalFeed users. It is now possible to schedule Nessus scans on a one-time, daily, weekly, monthly or yearly basis.
• The XSLT transformations now take place on the server, instead of the user’s web browser, for a unified and smoother user-experience.
• The user interface now allows you to select multiple scans, policies or reports and delete them in bulk.
• The web server is running and listening as soon as the “nessusd” process starts and no longer waits until it has finished processing the plugins.
• When a scanner is managed by SecurityCenter, the web interface is now enabled and updated automatically.

Don’t forget there’s also a free Nessus iPhone application. Features include remote starting, stopping and pausing of network scans as well as the ability to analyze scan results.