Local checks are run either on the system via an agent, or via an authenticated session (such as through SSH etc). Remote checks are run over the internet against your systems with no authentication or access beyond that of a normal attacker. It’s important to understand the difference between remote and local checks, and the coverage they can provide.

It made sense to base our analysis on the number of CVEs checked for. Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) are unique identifiers for publicly known vulnerabilities, while plugins can contain checks for multiple CVEs, and multiple plugins can check for the same CVE.

Before we get into the numbers though, let’s make sure we understand what we’re comparing.Īll of the metrics in this analysis are based on the number of CVEs that are covered by checks within each scanning engine, rather than how many checks (also known as “plugins”) are available.

While they share a common history, and some similarities remain, there are significant differences in their coverage. Since 2008 it is Greenbone Networks who develop and drive forward OpenVAS providing the feed of checks. Nessus was forked in 2005 to keep an open-source version alive, and in 2006 one of these forks was rebranded to OpenVAS. Nessus and OpenVAS started as the open-source Nessus Project back in 1998 by Renaud Deraison and in 2005 Tenable (co-founded by Renaud) changed the Nessus version 3 licence model to closed-source, looking to improve the solution by dedicating time and resources, and create a professional commercial product. Perhaps because they’re the most pervasive, or maybe because they have a shared history. Two that are most frequently compared are Tenable’s Nessus and Greenbone’s OpenVAS.

How to use nessus enum