Facebook Google Plus Twitter LinkedIn YouTube RSS Menu Search Resource - BlogResource - WebinarResource - ReportResource - Eventicons_066 icons_067icons_068icons_069icons_070

Tenable Blog

Subscribe

Tenable Training, First Hand

As a new Tenable employee, one of my first opportunities was to sit in on recently updated Nessus training classes taught by Tenable’s Training Lead, Matt Franz. Joining me in putting Matt on the hot seat was Tenable CSO Marcus Ranum. As a consultant, I have been using Nessus for almost ten years to assist in assessing clients’ networks, but had never attended formal training on the software. I sat in on the first day of class to better understand how to leverage Nessus to perform credentialed scans to audit a system against configuration standards such as CIS or PCI. Other students attended to not only learn more about Nessus, but also to learn how Nessus can specifically help assess their organization.

The first day covered a wide variety of activities involving the Nessus including installation, administration, configuration, scanning, policy generation, vulnerability analysis and reporting. Using a hands-on environment, students learned each aspect of the Nessus products by performing tests with a variety of configurations and hypothetical situations. Unlike many classes or training, the material wasn’t rigid in any way. As different ideas and questions came up, students were encouraged to discuss and experiment on the test network. In the first day alone, students chatted about the merit of CVSS scores, the philosophy of what defined a vulnerability and one-off situations on using Nessus across VPNs with SSH port forwarding. One of the nicer surprises to students was learning how to better manipulate scanner output, filter results to better match their needs and export them to a new file. Using this new-found ability, students quickly began discussing how this might better help administrators remediate vulnerabilities by severity, expertise or subnet. At some point, Matt brought in several boxes of pizza and encouraged us to chow down while we continued to learn. We ended up firing off several concurrent scans while watching a traffic monitor to see how much traffic was generated and directly answer students’ questions.

The second day delved into using Nessus for compliance audits, where students continued to learn and enhance their Nessus knowledge and skills as applied to their enterprise environments. With the ability for Nessus to assist in determining a system’s compliance with various federal guidelines, using the compliance plugins available to ProfessionalFeed customers adds additional functionality and value to an organization. This class gave additional instruction to students and demonstrated not only how to use the vulnerability scanner to ensure compliance, but also how to write custom audit profiles specific to their organizations.

Attending the Nessus training class made me realize that while the course material may be static, each class would invariably branch out and learn aspects of the scanner that were more helpful to the students’ own networks. Solid course material, combined with insightful class discussions provided a valuable learning experience.

For more information: http://www.nessus.org/training/

Related Articles

Cybersecurity News You Can Use

Enter your email and never miss timely alerts and security guidance from the experts at Tenable.

Tenable Vulnerability Management

Enjoy full access to a modern, cloud-based vulnerability management platform that enables you to see and track all of your assets with unmatched accuracy.

Your Tenable Vulnerability Management trial also includes Tenable Lumin and Tenable Web App Scanning.

Tenable Vulnerability Management

Enjoy full access to a modern, cloud-based vulnerability management platform that enables you to see and track all of your assets with unmatched accuracy. Purchase your annual subscription today.

100 assets

Choose Your Subscription Option:

Buy Now

Tenable Vulnerability Management

Enjoy full access to a modern, cloud-based vulnerability management platform that enables you to see and track all of your assets with unmatched accuracy.

Your Tenable Vulnerability Management trial also includes Tenable Lumin and Tenable Web App Scanning.

Tenable Vulnerability Management

Enjoy full access to a modern, cloud-based vulnerability management platform that enables you to see and track all of your assets with unmatched accuracy. Purchase your annual subscription today.

100 assets

Choose Your Subscription Option:

Buy Now

Tenable Vulnerability Management

Enjoy full access to a modern, cloud-based vulnerability management platform that enables you to see and track all of your assets with unmatched accuracy.

Your Tenable Vulnerability Management trial also includes Tenable Lumin and Tenable Web App Scanning.

Tenable Vulnerability Management

Enjoy full access to a modern, cloud-based vulnerability management platform that enables you to see and track all of your assets with unmatched accuracy. Purchase your annual subscription today.

100 assets

Choose Your Subscription Option:

Buy Now

Try Tenable Web App Scanning

Enjoy full access to our latest web application scanning offering designed for modern applications as part of the Tenable One Exposure Management platform. Safely scan your entire online portfolio for vulnerabilities with a high degree of accuracy without heavy manual effort or disruption to critical web applications. Sign up now.

Your Tenable Web App Scanning trial also includes Tenable Vulnerability Management and Tenable Lumin.

Buy Tenable Web App Scanning

Enjoy full access to a modern, cloud-based vulnerability management platform that enables you to see and track all of your assets with unmatched accuracy. Purchase your annual subscription today.

5 FQDNs

$3,578

Buy Now

Try Tenable Lumin

Visualize and explore your exposure management, track risk reduction over time and benchmark against your peers with Tenable Lumin.

Your Tenable Lumin trial also includes Tenable Vulnerability Management and Tenable Web App Scanning.

Buy Tenable Lumin

Contact a Sales Representative to see how Tenable Lumin can help you gain insight across your entire organization and manage cyber risk.

Try Tenable Nessus Professional Free

FREE FOR 7 DAYS

Tenable Nessus is the most comprehensive vulnerability scanner on the market today.

NEW - Tenable Nessus Expert
Now Available

Nessus Expert adds even more features, including external attack surface scanning, and the ability to add domains and scan cloud infrastructure. Click here to Try Nessus Expert.

Fill out the form below to continue with a Nessus Pro Trial.

Buy Tenable Nessus Professional

Tenable Nessus is the most comprehensive vulnerability scanner on the market today. Tenable Nessus Professional will help automate the vulnerability scanning process, save time in your compliance cycles and allow you to engage your IT team.

Buy a multi-year license and save. Add Advanced Support for access to phone, community and chat support 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Select Your License

Buy a multi-year license and save.

Add Support and Training

Try Tenable Nessus Expert Free

FREE FOR 7 DAYS

Built for the modern attack surface, Nessus Expert enables you to see more and protect your organization from vulnerabilities from IT to the cloud.

Already have Tenable Nessus Professional?
Upgrade to Nessus Expert free for 7 days.

Buy Tenable Nessus Expert

Built for the modern attack surface, Nessus Expert enables you to see more and protect your organization from vulnerabilities from IT to the cloud.

Select Your License

Buy a multi-year license and save more.

Add Support and Training