Activate a Tenable Nessus Professional or Tenable Nessus Expert Trial

The following topic describes how to activate a seven-day trial of Tenable Nessus Professional or Tenable Nessus Expert.

Tip: If you forgot to create a user account during activation, you can create an account with the adduser nessuscli command.

To activate your Tenable Nessus Professional or Tenable Nessus Expert trial:

  1. On the Welcome to Nessus screen, select the Tenable Nessus trial you want to activate:

    • Nessus Expert Trial

    • Nessus Professional Trial

  2. Click Continue.

    The Welcome to Nessus page appears.

  3. (Optional) To configure advanced settings such as proxy, plugin feed, and encryption password, click Settings.

    • (Optional) In the Proxy tab:
      1. In the Host box, type the hostname or IP address of your proxy server.

      2. In the Port box, type the port number of the proxy server.

        Note: To view the ports that Tenable products require, see the What ports are required for Tenable products? knowledge base article.
      3. In the Username box, type the name of a user account that has permissions to access and use the proxy server.
      4. In the Password box, type the password of the user account that you specified in the previous step.
      5. In the Auth Method drop-down box, select an authentication method to use for the proxy. If you do not know, select AUTO DETECT.
      6. If your proxy requires a preset user agent, in the User-Agent box, type the user agent name; otherwise, leave it blank.
      7. Click Save.
    • (Optional) In the Plugin Feed tab:
      1. In the Custom Host box, type the hostname or IP address of a custom plugin feed.
      2. Click Save.
    • (Optional) In the Encryption Password tab:

      1. In the Password box, type an encryption password.

        If you set an encryption password, Nessus encrypts all policies, scans results, and scan configurations. You must enter the password when Tenable Nessus restarts.

        Caution: If you lose your encryption password, it cannot be recovered by an administrator or Tenable Support.

      2. Click Save.

  4. Click Continue.

    The Account Lookup page appears.

  5. Enter the email address of your Tenable community account, or the email address you want to connect to your Tenable community account.

    • If Tenable Nessus recognizes the email address, a page appears saying that Tenable Nessus found your account.

    • If Tenable Nessus does not recognize the email address, the Create Account page appears.

      1. Enter your new account information.

  6. Click Start Trial.

    The Trial License Information page appears, and shows your activation code and the ending date of your trial. Tenable recommends recording your activation code somewhere safe.

  7. Click Continue.

    The Create a user account screen appears.

  8. Create a Tenable Nessus administrator user account that you use to log in to Tenable Nessus:
    1. In the Username box, enter a username.

    2. In the Password box, enter a password for the user account.

      Note: Passwords cannot contain Unicode characters.

  9. Click Submit.

    Tenable Nessus finishes the configuration process and signs you into the user interface.

    Note: When you sign in to Tenable Nessus for the first time, you receive the following message: Plugins are compiling. Tenable Nessus functionality will be limited until compilation is complete. You cannot create or launch scans, view or create policies or plugin rules, or use the upgrade assistant while Tenable Nessus compiles plugins.