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Prioritize Hosts Report

by David Schwalenberg
April 7, 2015

Prioritize Hosts Report Screenshot

What systems need attention now? What systems can be safely ignored for the time being? System administrators often have so much to do that it can be difficult for them to prioritize their host administration and mitigation efforts. This report can assist in that prioritization by presenting multiple top 100 lists of hosts in various categories, such as most vulnerable, most infected with malware, most policy violations, most out of compliance, most detected changes, etc. The components in this report make use of active scan information from Nessus, passive scan information from the Nessus Network Monitor (NNM), and event data from the Log Correlation Engine (LCE). In this way, a system administrator can obtain the most comprehensive and integrated view of the network, in order to make the best prioritization decisions about administration and mitigation efforts.

This report contains many helpful lists of hosts, but a system administrator may want to prioritize hosts based on different criteria. Several of the components in this report contain suggestions on how to modify the components to generate additional lists of hosts, if desired. The system administrator can edit the report definition and customize this report to best help in prioritization decisions.

The report is available in the Tenable.sc Feed, a comprehensive collection of dashboards, reports, assurance report cards and assets. The report can be easily located in the Tenable.sc Feed under the category Monitoring. The report requirements are:

  • Tenable.sc 4.8.2
  • Nessus 6.2.1
  • NNM 4.2.0
  • LCE 4.4.1

For the related Tenable.sc dashboard, see the Prioritize Hosts dashboard.

Prioritizing administration and mitigation efforts also involves risk management. Risk is the potential that a threat will exploit a vulnerability to cause harm to an organization. An organization that does not properly manage risk may incur substantial losses because mitigation efforts are focused in the wrong areas. The Understanding Risk Report can assist an organization in understanding and managing their risk.

Tenable.sc Continuous View (Tenable.sc CV) is the market-defining continuous network monitoring platform. Tenable.sc CV includes active vulnerability detection with Nessus and passive vulnerability detection with Nessus Network Monitor (NNM), as well as log correlation with Tenable's Log Correlation Engine (LCE). Using Tenable.sc CV, an organization will obtain the most comprehensive and integrated view of its network, in order to best prioritize its administration and mitigation efforts.

Chapters

Executive Summary - This chapter presents summary information about hosts on the network in various categories, such as most vulnerable, most infected with malware, most policy violations, most out of compliance, etc. Since this report may need to be customized to best help with prioritization decisions, the Executive Summary contains examples for ideas on how best to present information.

Lists of Hosts - This chapter contains three sections that present lists of hosts on the network in various categories. The lists of hosts in the "By Vulnerabilities" section are based on active and passive detections of vulnerabilities on the network. The lists of hosts in the "By Malware and Suspicious Activity" section are based on detections of malware and potentially suspicious events on the network. The lists of hosts in the "By Network Activity" section are based on detections of host activity on the network.