Tenable Network Security announced the general availability of a virtual appliance for the Nessus Vulnerability Scanner.

Tenable's Nessus Virtual Appliance for VMware is a pre-built, pre-configured and ready-to-run software application packaged with the operating system inside a virtual machine. This is available to Tenable ProfessionalFeed subscribers as a free download and the virtual appliance is easily deployed in under 10 minutes -- reducing infrastructure cost/complexity, simplifying deployment and maximizing ROI in VMware environments. The combination of Tenable's Nessus with VMware virtualization technologies allows organizations to deploy Nessus scanners using physical as well as virtual servers.

"We are very pleased that Tenable is releasing a virtual appliance for Nessus. We constantly have requests from our global customers about solutions that operate in virtual environments. Having the option of deploying Nessus as a virtual appliance marries two technologies whose use is widespread and provides our global end-users a simple, viable and cost effective option for Nessus deployments," says Jason Lee, of SHI.

"Most Federal agencies increasingly are turning to virtualization technology to consolidate servers and data centers to reduce server, computing costs and power consumption. Server virtualization is definitely gathering momentum in the government sector. We believe that many of our Federal customers will view this move by Tenable as extremely helpful and timely in their migration efforts of security technologies to the virtual world," says Kari Yent, of Force 3, an authorized Tenable ProfessionalFeed partner.

With server consolidation, disaster recovery and cost considerations thrusting server virtualization into mainstream datacenter operations, IT operations personnel are beginning to worry about security. The virtual appliance for Nessus brings benefits to the marketplace. First, instead of building a server to host Nessus and deal with the installation process, Tenable customers can download and operate Nessus on a dedicated VM and reduce the complexity of installation and configuration. Second, as new images of the Nessus VM are made available, moving to them saves time by using an image that has been tested. Finally, Nessus can be positioned on a pre-configured virtual server in locations of your network that would not regularly host a scanner but can be on an as needed basis allowing for less disruption to the network.

"Releasing Nessus as a virtual appliance is just one of the many improvements to Nessus we have in store for our Nessus user base. As virtual environments continue to grow, we feel it is essential that end users of Tenable's software have the ability to take advantage of the benefits of virtual platforms while at the same time using our software to audit the virtual infrastructure to ensure secure virtual environments," says Ron Gula, CEO of Tenable.