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Currently we are looking at vulnerability scanners and of course everyone like a free product to use vs. paid. We are testing OpenVAS on a few systems before letting it loose in our 50+ server environment, I wanted to see has anyone used it and would recommend it or would you prefer (the paid software) NetXpose or Nessus?

6 Spice ups
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Not sure about the OpenVAS but we’re using Nessus last couple of months and it is absolutely brilliant. Anything from missing patches on PCs to open ports and lack of firewalls on the network.

We’ve discovered some IP addresses that looked like they are on our network but they were not ours. Found out that there is some issue on our ISP leaving other customer network exposed. We were able to access some company UPS management sites and even VNC to a PC that was setup with some sort of CCTV - this was scary stuff.

Anyway - Yes Nessus is HELPING us a lot.

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OpenVAS is what Nessus was before it went closed source. Ive used Nessus and OpenVAS and i like them both. Nessus’s cost really isnt very much as all if you have any sort of budget to play with. OpenVAS is free but as with any free thing you have to rely on the community to troubleshoot. I never has any issues with OpenVAS not even with the install and setup, which you hear alot of people complaining about, im not sure how they can mess it up actually.

If you have the budget (what its around 2k/year) get Nessus, its a great product and they have professional support. If you dont have the budget, use OpenVAS, its great and all it will cost you in a re-purposed machine or a VM in virtualbox, so minimal to nothing but a little time.

edit: main difference that i saw is OpenVAS came up with a couple of extra false positives, but false positives are nothing to be afraid of, only false negatives.

4 Spice ups