Back Up Nessus

Using the Nessus CLI, you can back up your Nessus to restore it later on any system, even if it is a different operating system. When you back up Nessus, your license information and settings are preserved. Nessus does not back up scan results.

Note: If you perform a cross-platform backup and restore between Linux and Windows systems, after you restore Nessus, you must reconfigure any Nessus configurations that use schedules. Schedules do not transfer correctly across these platforms because the operating systems use different timezone names.

To back up Nessus:

  1. Access Nessus from a command terminal.

  2. Create the Nessus backup file by running the following command:

    > nessuscli backup --create <backup_filename>

    Nessus creates the backup file in the following directory:

    • Linux: /opt/nessus/var/nessus
    • Windows: C:\ProgramData\Tenable\Nessus\nessus
    • macOS: /Library/Nessus/run/var/nessus

  3. (Optional) Move the Nessus backup file to a backup location on your system.

What to do next: