The new version of SecPod Saner is a platform for security and compliance that includes a vulnerability manager.
Because it is a software as a service (SaaS) platform that is hosted in the Cloud, SecPod SanerNow is not restricted by the server or the network that hosts it. The Vulnerability Manager module of the SanerNow system conducts scans of computer networks to look for potential vulnerabilities. This solution provides an efficient method for protecting all of your company’s IT assets, irrespective of where they are physically situated.
In addition to its vulnerability assessment method, the SanerNow platform also contains a wide variety of other services. Your system will remain secure and compliant with all data privacy regulations thanks to the modules’ coordinated efforts to thwart malicious software and unauthorized users.
Regarding SecPod
In 2008, Bangalore, Karnataka, India served as the location for the establishment of SecPod Technologies, Inc. The phrase “Security Podium” has been condensed into the name “SecPod.” The business is still controlled by its creator, Chandrashekhar Basavanna, who also holds the position of Chief Executive Officer for the company. The company has maintained its independence. Additionally, Basavanna serves as a board member for the open source initiative that is responsible for managing the Open Vulnerability and Assessment Language. The second Vulnerability Manager makes use of OVAL, and the company also provides developers for the project.
Redwood City, in the state of California, serves as the location of SecPod Technologies’ headquarters in the United States. On the other hand, its support technicians and members of the development team are located in Bangalore.
The platform known as SanerNow
The SanerNow SaaS platform serves as the foundation for each and every product that SecPod offers. The SanerNow Cyberhygene Platform is the company’s official name in its entirety.
The tools on the platform are organised into two distinct categories:
• Concerns Over Compliance And Security
• Endpoint Management
Each and every component that is offered through the SanerNow platform will cooperate with one another. You are not required to have both types of services; in fact, you are not even required to subscribe to all of the modules that come with each category if you don’t want to. Instead, you can choose which modules you want to use.
The live performance monitoring and endpoint detection and response capabilities are included in the Endpoint Management component of the platform (EDR). The administration of endpoints was also significantly improved thanks to the modules that were integrated with the forum’s Security Risk and Compliance section.
For the purposes of this evaluation, our attention will be focused on the SanerNow platform’s Security Risk and Compliance features.
Compliance and Security Risk Management Provided by SanerNow
The Vulnerability Manager serves as the focal point of the platform, which was made possible by the company’s extensive cooperation with OVAL. This function is supported by further modules. The SanerNow platform modules are cross-platform and can run on computers that are operating Windows, macOS, or Linux. To achieve this goal, it is necessary for each endpoint to have an agent placed on it in order for it to coordinate with the SanerNow cloud platform.
The following is an exhaustive list of the modules that make up SanerNow Security Risk and Compliance:
• Asset Management
• Vulnerability Management
• Managing Updates and Patches
• Management of Compliance Procedures
The Asset Management module creates documentation for all of the system’s components, including its software and hardware. In order to determine whether or not all of the devices have the most recent versions of their operating systems, services, apps, and software, a vulnerability scanner needs to find all of the devices and scan all of those components on each one. An internal vulnerability scan is being performed right now, and its focus is on strengthening the system.
In addition to an internal scan of a protected system, a vulnerability assessment of the system parameters should be performed. This investigates setups that offer insufficient protection and make it possible for malicious software or other attackers to move laterally from one device to another. The absence of activity recording also makes it possible for hackers to conduct covert operations. This means that the Compliance Management section of the platform is in charge of ensuring that all log capabilities are turned on and that log messages are collected and filed away. The SanerNow system is responsible for ensuring that these two things happen.
Therefore, despite the fact that it may appear as though Vulnerability Manager is merely one of the modules contained inside the SanerNow system, the reality is that each and every module contained within the platform makes a contribution to the process of vulnerability management. To briefly describe the contributions made by each module toward the management of internal vulnerabilities:
Asset Management
A protected system is analysed by the Asset Manager, which then generates inventories for the system. The hardware and software inventories are also included in this. Repeated scans of the network and devices are used to keep these asset listings up to current at regular intervals.
Vulnerability Manager
The vulnerability scanner analyses a database containing more than 160,000 probable flaws and works from that. The time it takes for the scanning service to perform a system sweep is only approximately five minutes, despite the lengthy proprietary list of vulnerabilities it checks for.
Manager of Patches
The Vulnerability Manager is intimately connected to the Patch Management module due to the fact that software vendors frequently release updates with the sole intention of patching up newly identified vulnerabilities.
This module contacts software vendors in order to obtain the most recent versions of all of the assets that are included in the software inventory. If there are newer versions available than those that are now installed, the Patch Manager will obtain the update installers and run them during the next available maintenance window if there are newer versions available.
In addition to being able to patch all of the major operating systems, the Patch Manager can also update more than 350 separate third-party software products.
The Manager of Compliance
This section analyses the configurations of the devices and makes suggestions for making them more stringent so that the built-in security features of the system assets can be utilised to their fullest capacity. The Compliance Manager system monitors the configurations to make sure that they are not changed in any way, and it also gathers logs to make sure that the company is in compliance with the rules for data protection.
The Compliance Manager will modify its behaviour in accordance with the specifications made by the user regarding the standards that should be adhered to. Options are:
• HIPAA
• PCI DSS
• NIST 800-53
• NIST 800-171
• ISO
The Compliance Manager contains templates that can be used to generate reports that are appropriate for compliance reporting automatically.
Vulnerability Assessment of the External Environment
Attacks coming from outside the network are likely to cause the most damage to your system. Internet connections can enable backdoors into your network, allowing criminals and harmful software to install themselves on your computers and other electronic devices. In addition, web assets can be hacked by utilising well-known attack tactics, and the SanerNow vulnerability scanner investigates these potential vulnerabilities.
By default, the vulnerability scanner known as SanerNow will run at regular intervals. On the other hand, the user has the ability to initiate scans whenever they choose or to conduct continuous scanning processes. On the dashboard, the results of each scan are displayed in the form of a live report. This provides a listing of each asset along with the vulnerabilities that were detected while the object was being scanned. Risk scores presented in a color-coded format make it simple to distinguish between major and less serious vulnerabilities. Additionally, after each run, the scanner generates a sorted and ordered list of any vulnerabilities that were detected.
In the Vulnerability Manager, the analysis functions present the historically severe and notable instances of each type of vulnerability, as well as the likelihood of their recurrence and the locations at which they are most likely to occur.
SanerNow Vulnerability Database
The SanerNow system looks for well-known attack tactics from two different comprehensive lists of those strategies. These are the top 10 threats identified by the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP), as well as the top 25 threats identified by SANS. The OWASP and SANS intelligence is incorporated into the company’s list of known vulnerabilities, which the SecPod system uses to make its determinations rather than having to browse through two separate lists.
The list of vulnerabilities that is provided by SecPod is referred to as the SCAP feed, and it contains more than 160,000 flaws. The abbreviation for “Security Content Automation Protocol” is “SCAP.” The format for instruction exchanges that are related to security actions might be created by means of an open standard. The SecPod project contributes to the development of the OVAL security definition language, which can be used to describe the SCAP.
In addition, SecPod offers its SCAP feed as a stand-alone service for its customers. This is quite similar to a threat intelligence feed, with the key difference being that it does not include any data that could be considered an indicator of compromise, such as a list of potential hacker IP addresses and domains. Despite this, subscribers to the SanerNow SCAP feed are provided with a daily update that may be imported into third-party security products without any further steps.
The Dashboard Provided by SanerNow
The dashboard that SanerNow uses can be customised. It will only display the screens associated with the modules that you have subscribed to rather than all of the screens that are available for the platform as a whole. The panels have vibrant colours and themes based on heatmaps to make it simpler to identify problems. Red indicates the worst possible situation, while yellow and light blue represent the opposite end of the spectrum.
Because the SanerNow system is hosted in the cloud, there is no need for you to install any server systems on your local network in order to make use of the hosted dashboard. Any regular web browser can be used to access the dashboard, allowing users to log in from any location.
Options for Deploying SanerNow in Organizations
SanerNow is a Software as a Service platform that is hosted in the cloud on the servers maintained by SecPod. On each of your endpoints, however, you will need to install agent programmes. This is a need. On each of your devices, you will need to install one agent. This agent will handle all of the necessary local work for each of the SanerNow modules that you have subscribed to. Through the use of the dashboard, the installation of SanerNow agents can be performed step by step. Agents are downloadable for use on computers running Windows, macOS, and Linux.
For those companies who would rather host the SanerNow system on their own servers, SecPod will provide the system as a software bundle that can be installed on their systems. On Linux, this software will function properly.
Prices for SecPods from SanerNow
The price list that SecPod uses for SanerNow is not made public. On the other hand, the company provides a risk-free trial of all SanerNow modules for a period of thirty days.
SanerNow Vulnerability Manager Strengths and Weaknesses
The package that SecPod has put together is very excellent. The organisation has been successful in expanding the scope of their vulnerability management scanning service beyond the typical boundaries of typical vulnerability management. The Compliance Management module incorporates reporting and monitoring of compliance as part of its functionality; configuration management is an illustration of this tactic.
After doing an analysis, we found that SecPod SanerNow possessed both positive and negative characteristics.
Pros:
• A scalable and adaptable architecture that can be deployed in a variety of ways
• Quick scans and vulnerability findings that are simple to understand
• A database containing information on more than 160,000 different vulnerabilities
• A cloud-based service that does not consume the resources of the local computer
• Connectivity between related modules that is handled automatically
• Analytical capabilities to support safe methods of labour
Cons:
• Because of the modular design, you might need to sign up for a lot of different subscriptions in order to have a complete vulnerability manager.
Different options available besides SanerNow Vulnerability Manager
Even though it is without flaw, the SanerNow solution is not the only choice available to you because there are many other good vulnerability managers on the market. Before purchasing any kind of information technology system, especially security software, it is a good idea to investigate a number of potential alternatives beforehand.
The following is a list that we have compiled of the five most viable alternatives to SanerNow:
1. The Invicti (GET DEMO ACCESS) This vulnerability scanner also provides continuous testing, which makes it an excellent choice for a CI/CD pipeline in a DevOps context because of its compatibility with that pipeline. On the other hand, there is also a straightforward tool for scanning vulnerabilities available for IT Operations. This system is able to detect common security flaws when seen from the outside, and it also makes an attempt to scan the code and locate probable security flaws in module cohesion and clashing activities between contributing components. By connecting with systems owned and operated by external parties, Invicti is able to patch any security holes that may exist. Additionally, it has the ability to send notifications using ticketing and project management systems in order to assign technicians to fix problems. Invicti can be purchased as a stand-alone software package or as a service that can be installed on Windows and Windows Server. A demo version of Invicti is available for you to try out.
2. Acunetix (GET DEMO ACCESS) This vulnerability management conducts scans in both the internal and external environments. It is offered in three separate editions, each of which caters to a distinct testing requirement for security. The external scanner searches for a list of seven thousand vulnerabilities, which includes the OWASP Top 10 most common flaws. The vulnerability list that the internal scanner uses contains more than 50,000 different types of known flaws. This service can be adapted to meet the specific requirements of several standards, like HIPAA, PCI DSS, and ISO 27001, among others. This is a Software as a Service (SaaS) package, although the software can also be installed on computers running Windows, macOS, and Linux. In addition, there is a trial version of Acunetix that can be used for evaluation purposes.
3. Rapid7 InsightVM (recommended) This vulnerability scanner is a component of a platform that provides an array of security tools, each of which can be subscribed to independently or as part of a larger package. Automated patch management is included in the InsightVM package, and the utility will recommend changes to the system’s hardware and software settings to harden it. The servers, networks, endpoints, web assets, cloud resources, and containers will all be inspected by this service. A free trial of InsightVM can be used for a period of 30 days.
4. ManageEngine Vulnerability Manager Plus This is a comprehensive package that, by default, conducts a scan every ninety minutes; however, the frequency of these scans can be changed. A linked patch manager is also included in the package. This patch manager will activate itself automatically whenever it determines that updates are a solution to a discovered vulnerability. In addition to this, the tool is able to do both internal and external scans and create recommendations for configuration changes. These recommendations can then be automatically executed thanks to the integrated Configuration Manager. This piece of software is offered for a free trial period of 30 days, and it may be installed on Windows Server.
5. Intruder This software as a service (SaaS) platform hosted in the cloud provides a selection of pricing tiers to accommodate enterprises of varying sizes. Even the most basic plan includes a vulnerability scan once each month. Plans with more storage space and bandwidth offer SSL certificate audits and scans on demand. The service does external as well as internal scans, each of which includes checks against a list containing more than 10,000 vulnerabilities. Additionally, Intruder provides the services of a team that performs penetration testing. In addition, you will be able to obtain a free trial of Intruder Pro for a period of thirty days.
