[September 09, 2010] Tenable Network Security Gets U.S. Patent for Network Monitoring Technology Tweet Sep 02, 2010 (Close-Up Media via COMTEX) -- Tenable Network Security, a developer of unified security monitoring solutions, and creator of the Nessus vulnerability scanner, said that it has been granted a patent by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for Tenable's passive network monitoring approach to determine network vulnerabilities and provide network analysis. In a release, the Company noted: "This patent is the first to be awarded in Tenable's growing intellectual property portfolio," said Jack Huffard, President of Tenable. "In addition to this first awarded patent, Tenable has five other patent-pending technologies filed with the Patent and Trademark office. This issued patent predates recent developments in vulnerability analysis validating the approach on which Tenable has focused for years." Tenable developed the Passive Vulnerability Scanner (PVS) to complement its other active network scanner, Nessus. Where Nessus allows organizations to audit networks for known vulnerabilities, conduct full patch and configuration and compliance audits at a point in time, Tenable's PVS allows organizations to continuously monitor the same network by analyzing network traffic and provide real-time updates to Tenable's SecurityCenter on new devices, applications running on those devices and known vulnerabilities associated with those devices. "Tenable's PVS significantly reduces the need to actively scan and disrupt entire networks," said Andrew Hay, senior analyst with The 451 Group's Enterprise Security Program (ESP). "Without having to rely solely on traditional active scanning techniques, Tenable's customers can instead direct active scanning cycles to further investigate abnormal network behavior or even discover new devices found on the network." "We are encouraged that the U.S. Patent and Trade Office has recognized our passive monitoring technology as worthy of protection," said Ron Gula, CEO of Tenable. "Tenable pioneered continuous vulnerability monitoring and we continue to invest in research and development resources to extend its capability. We truly believe that customers who employ our active and passive monitoring approaches to audit their networks have a much higher probability of detecting security issues in real-time." This patent, filed in 2004, protects one of the core analytic technologies in Tenable's Unified Security Monitoring product suite and focuses on the manner in which Tenable monitors and analyzes network data for vulnerability and security related issues. Specifically, Tenable's PVS patented technology sniffs packets traveling across the network. The PVS analyzes information from the sniffed packets to build an inventory of devices, operating systems and applications that are active on the network. In addition, the PVS analyzes the information to detect vulnerabilities in devices, operating systems and applications. Finally, the PVS prepares a report containing the detected devices, operating systems and applications with the respective detected vulnerabilities. Because the PVS operates passively, it may operate continuously without burdening the network. ((Comments on this story may be sent to [email protected])) [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]