knowledge-base:general:nessus-agent-installation

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What are Nessus Agents

Nessus Agents are lightweight client programs that are installed locally on a host. Agents collect vulnerability, compliance, and system data and report that information back to a Tenable Security Center.

Agents run under the local SYSTEM account in Windows or root on Linux-based operating systems, and do require sufficient privileges to install software under that account on setup. Nessus Agents are packaged for installation on their respective platforms, and after installation, a scriptable command can be used to register the agent with an instance of Nessus Cloud or Tenable Security Center.

Nessus Agent Configuration Attributes

Download the appropriate agent installer for your operating system/platform from this link. http://www.tenable.com/products/nessus/agent-download

During installation, use the following options/attributes to link your agent to the UTK Tenable Security Center Vulnerability Management System:

  • server=cloud.tenable.com:443
  • key=3b94865460bc6e1c7207ad6b203841288306f77d266a83b227dd2b85e2e815b7
  • group name=UTK_EECS