Question

Automating the comparison of monthly security scans

Asked by: Lator

Our organization has a new requirement: Whenever a patch is applied on servers, AND every month, we're to document which ports are open and if the open ports have changed from the previous scan.

I'm wondering if there is any way to automate this process, in some way that would make it easy to compare from month to month. Running these scans manually and creating reports add a lot of overhead to our patching process.

Thanks!

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Asked On
2009-09-02 at 11:53:20ID24702401
Tags

vulnerability

,

scans

,

open port

,

automation

Topics

Networking Security Vulnerabilities

,

Miscellaneous Security

,

Security Utilities

Participating Experts
2
Points
500
Comments
3

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Answers

 

by: ahoffmannPosted on 2009-09-03 at 00:26:55ID: 25248460

do you run these scans yourself, or is it done by a 3rd party company (SaaS)?
which tool are you using for the scans?

 

by: jahboitePosted on 2009-09-03 at 03:10:03ID: 25249116

Using Nmap http://nmap.org you can scan your entire organisation on a regular basis and have nmap produce an xml file showing:
host up/down
services/ports available on each host
product name and version of each service
operating systems

Using Ndiff, which ships with Nmap, you see the differences between two scans as easily as:

ndiff scan_1.xml scan_2.xml

Ndiff was written for exactly this purpose and is not simply a diffing tool, it is fully aware of the Nmap scan context.
It seems that, right at this moment, nmap.org is down (very odd) so pointing you at http://nmap.org/ndiff/ so you can read more is a bit difficult.  You might be interested in a video demonstration:
http://www.irongeek.com/i.php?page=videos/ndiff-nmap-5

Finally, Nmap and Ndiff are command line tools which make it trivial to script and schedule using *nix cron or windows Scheduled Tasks.

 

by: LatorPosted on 2009-09-08 at 12:44:53ID: 31624062

Thank you for pointing me in the right direction. I will be looking to use nmap with an ndiff script, running every month. I'll have to figure out how to script this..

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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