Agents

Agents increase scan flexibility by making it easy to scan assets without needing ongoing host credentials or assets that are offline. Additionally, agents enable large-scale concurrent scanning with little network impact.

Once linked, you must add an agent to an agent group to use when configuring scans. Linked agents automatically download plugins from the manager upon connection. Agents are automatically unlinked after a period of inactivity.

Note: Agents must download plugins before they return scan results. This process can take several minutes.

To manage agents, see the following:

Agent groups

You can use agent groups to organize and manage the agents linked to your scanner. You can add each agent to any number of groups and you can configured scans to use these groups as targets.

Note: Agent group names are case-sensitive. When you link agents using System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) or the command line, you must use the correct case.

For more information, see Agent Groups.

Agent updates

You can configure the Tenable Nessus Agent version that Tenable Nessus Manager offers to its linked Tenable Nessus Agents.

For more information, see Agent Updates.

Freeze windows

Freeze windows allow you to schedule times where Tenable Nessus suspends certain activities for all linked agents.

For more information, see Freeze Windows.

Agent clustering

With Tenable Nessus Manager clustering, you can deploy and manage large numbers of agents from a single Tenable Nessus Manager instance.

For more information, see Clustering.