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

Tenable Blog

Subscribe

Accelerate Vulnerability Detection and Response for AWS with Tenable Cloud Security Agentless Assessment

Tenable Cloud Security Agentless Assessment: Vulnerability Detection and Response for AWS with

Learn how to leverage our latest cloud security discovery feature, Tenable Cloud Security Agentless Assessment, to enhance the way you scan for software vulnerabilities and misconfigurations in the cloud.

Historically, vulnerability scanning in the cloud has been accomplished by way of using network-based scanners like Nessus or an agent-based approach with Nessus Agents. For years, Tenable has been the gold standard for security practitioners who want fast, comprehensive and accurate vulnerability scans backed by world class vulnerability research. Our customers have asked for easier ways to configure and manage their Nessus scans in the cloud and, in 2020, we released Tenable.io Frictionless Assessment, which was our first step into transforming Nessus to become more cloud-focused.

Tenable Cloud Security Agentless Assessment for Amazon Web Services (AWS) takes the groundbreaking work that Tenable.io Frictionless Assessment laid out and completely upgrades it for a truly seamless cloud native scanning solution.

A common problem security professionals run into within the cloud is attempting to apply traditional vulnerability management concepts to cloud workloads — especially ephemeral workloads. Auto-scaling enables cloud instances to spin up and spin down, which means traditional scan windows could miss assets needing to be assessed. Service account credentials for scanning are a pain to manage in the cloud, and it can be a challenge to get different teams to standardize and adopt endpoint agents or simply use images approved by the security team. Necessity is the mother of invention, as they say, and, with Tenable Cloud Security Agentless Assessment, we set out to build a unique technology that overcomes these obstacles.

It's clear that removing obstacles that extend the time to discover and detect vulnerabilities, in general, has a significant impact on the amount of risk carried by an organization. Agentless Assessment aims to enhance the abilities of security teams to gain complete visibility into cloud configurations and perform comprehensive vulnerability assessment in a quick and efficient way, giving our customers a better shot at reducing that risk, faster.

Agentless Assessment for AWS

Tenable Cloud Security Agentless Assessment for AWS enables cloud security teams to use the power of Nessus for vulnerability and misconfiguration assessments without the need to install scanners or agents, configure credentials on target hosts or set up scan policies. Using a proprietary approach, it enables users to onboard their cloud accounts within minutes and scan all assets for software vulnerabilities and cloud posture misconfigurations without any impact on compute speed or costs. The speed at which we're able to collect data, coupled with our event-driven approach, dramatically improves Tenable's ability to ensure our customers are confident in the vulnerability information we're providing. In the process, we're helping cloud security teams and developers quickly identify security weaknesses and providing actionable recommendations on what should be done to fix them.

Furthermore, when a new vulnerability detection is published to our vulnerability research feed, Tenable Cloud Security allows security teams to identify potential vulnerabilities within their existing collected inventory without needing to execute a new scan. This near real-time detection and unique approach to vulnerability assessment enables users to reduce their mean time to remediate issues. As a result, it provides the crucial data security teams need to make informed decisions about how to prioritize their remediation efforts.

Additional benefits of Tenable Cloud Security Agentless Assessment include:

  • Ease of deployment: Agentless Assessment is API driven, so the deployment is a breeze with a single integration point: a read-only role to check for misconfigurations and vulnerabilities in one fell swoop.
  • Two solutions in one: Scan for vulnerabilities and cloud infrastructure configurations with a single tool.
  • Limited scan overhead: There are no agents to deploy or bake in, no scan templates, and no policies to define. Data simply flows into Tenable Cloud Security.
  • Gold standard vulnerability detection: The Tenable vulnerability and threat feeds, trusted by thousands of organizations around the globe, are utilized by Agentless Assessment.
  • Continuous vulnerability assurance: When new vulnerabilities are identified and detections are created, the Tenable Cloud Security immediately rescans and re-assesses all stored inventories against the most updated vulnerability feed.
  • Safety: The scans are read-only, no write permissions are required.
  • Flexibility: The tool allows users the ability to run continuous Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) event-driven scans, scheduled scans, or simply execute manual scans on an ad-hoc basis.

Additionally, Tenable Cloud Security Agentless Assessment makes it easy for cloud security teams to ensure AWS cloud workloads are configured correctly by providing pre-built policy templates for detecting risks in runtime, such as:

  • Identity-based (e.g., overprivileged admins)
  • Insecure storage configuration or access activities (e.g., wide open and/or unencrypted Amazon Simple Storage [S3] buckets in AWS, etc.)
  • Insecure instance creation and deletion
  • Insecure network configurations and activities
  • And many more…

How to use Agentless Assessment for AWS

Step 1. Onboard all of your AWS accounts in minutes. 

Getting started is super fast and easy. All you need are read-only and IAM Audit roles, easily deployed in a few steps for multi-account AWS environments. These will automatically deploy the needed role at all sub accounts that are within scope. Tenable Cloud Security automatically creates snapshots of your virtual disks to scan, so there's no need to separately create storage snapshots. This video also shows how to create an optional auto-remediation role. All the JSON needed for these roles is provided.

Step 2. Start Agentless Assessment scans

With Agentless Assessment, there are no scan templates to configure, you've already deployed the role so you have no credentials to set up. Your workloads and AWS environment are automatically scanned as soon as you complete onboarding. Data simply flows into Tenable Cloud Security and vulnerabilities are presented within the unified findings workspace.

Step 3. Achieve up-to-date visibility of all your cloud assets that is easily searchable

As data flows into Tenable Cloud Security, users can leverage existing functionality to prioritize vulnerabilities for remediation. Users immediately have access to the contextualized threats, Toxic Combinations that show risks based on your environment and configurations, excessive permissions, and much more.

What’s next?

Existing Tenable customers can now get early access to Tenable Cloud Security Agentless Assessment for AWS. The new functionality is scheduled for general availability at the end of September. In Q4, Tenable expects to release Agentless Assessment for Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP), along with additional enhancements around container security.

Learn more

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