Welcome to Nessus Agent 10.3.x
Last updated: March 15, 2023
Nessus Agents are lightweight, low-footprint programs that you install locally on hosts to supplement traditional network-based scanning or to provide visibility into gaps that traditional scanning misses. Nessus Agents collect vulnerability, compliance, and system data, and report that information back to a manager for analysis. With Nessus Agents, you extend scan flexibility and coverage. You can scan hosts and endpoints that intermittently connect to the internet without using credentials. You can also run large-scale concurrent agent scans with little network impact.
About Nessus Agents
Nessus Agents help you address the challenges of traditional network-based scanning, specifically for the assets where it's impossible or nearly impossible to consistently collect information about your organization's security posture. Traditional scanning typically occurs at selected intervals or during designated windows and requires systems to be accessible when a scan executes. If laptops or other transient devices are not accessible when a scan executes, they are excluded from the scan, leaving you unaware of vulnerabilities on those devices.
Once installed on servers, portable devices, or other assets found in today’s complex IT environments, Nessus Agents identify vulnerabilities, policy violations, misconfigurations, and malware on the hosts where they are installed and report results back to the managing product. You can manage Nessus Agents with Nessus Manager or Tenable.io.