What is a Plugin?

Every audit in Tenable Nessus is coded as a  plugin : a simple program which checks for a given flaw. There are currently over 40,000 different plugins used by Nessus, covering local and remote flaws.

Staying Up-To-Date

New vulnerabilities are discovered and published every day. As a result, staying up-to-date is a must if you want to perform a security scan. Every week, several dozens of plugins are added in the Tenable Nessus plugin feeds (HomeFeed and ProfessionalFeed).

To ensure your plugins are always up-to-date, your feed must have been activated according to the instructions you received by email after your purchase/download . Once your plugin feed (HomeFeed or ProfessionalFeed) is registered, it will fetch the newest plugins automatically every 24 hours, or you can use the command  nessus-update-plugins  to force an update of your plugins.

Plugin Feed Information

As information about new vulnerabilities are discovered and released into the general public domain, Tenable's research staff designs programs to enable Tenable Nessus to detect the presence of them. These programs are named 'plugins' and are written in the Nessus Attack Scripting Language (NASL). The plugins contain vulnerability information, a generic set of remediation actions and the algorithm to test for the presence of the security issue. In some cases, one plugin may depend upon another. Typically, Tenable Network Security produces plugins for vulnerabilities within 24 hours of its public release.

ProfessionalFeed and HomeFeed

There are two types of feed subscriptions available: the ProfessionalFeed (for business/enterprise use) or the HomeFeed (for home use only). If you are going to use the Tenable Nessus scanner in a business capacity, you must purchase the ProfessionalFeed to scan your network, obtain support, update your database of vulnerability checks, and for compliance auditing.

Comparison matrix

Tenable Nessus ProfessionalFeed subscriptions may be purchased from our Authorized ProfessionalFeed Partners or Tenable's Online Store.