Sunbelt Inspector

Opinion
Nov 30, 20042 mins

* SunBelt Network Security Inspector is a good choice for a secondary vulnerability scanner

If you are in the market for a less expensive secondary vulnerability scanner, you might want to take a look at SunBelt Network Security Inspector.

SunBelt – which acts as an OEM to the Harris vulnerability database – sets its price at about $1,500 per administrator, not licensed by IP address like most of its competitors. Based on this price, relative scanning speed and ease of use, SunBelt could be used as a secondary point scanner for quick scans.

However, based on our accuracy testing, we don’t recommend that you rely on it as a primary vulnerability assessment tool.

While the scan impact was minimal, SunBelt’s product did not identify all the devices in our operating system identification test and provided limited information, such as “Linux” or “Windows” for the systems it identified.

Vulnerability scan results also were out of line with other products tested. SunBelt would sometimes identify different vulnerabilities than the other products, although the remediation tasks would result in the issue being fixed. On the Red Hat 6.2 system, though, it identified 14 vulnerabilities that were false positives and not reported by any of the other products tested.

The SunBelt GUI is very strong. The product is fast and very easy to use. Reports are provided through a Crystal Reports engine, but they are only exportable by printing to PDF.

Because this product is designed to be a point scanner, scan scheduling and options configuration are not included. Vulnerability updates are also only performed manually.

For the full report, go to https://www.nwfusion.com/reviews/2004/110804revside.html

Neal Weinberg

Neal Weinberg is an experienced technology journalist with in-depth knowledge of cybersecurity, networking, cloud, wireless, IoT, IT careers, AI, robotics, digital transformation, and self-driving vehicles. Before becoming a freelance writer, he spent 17 years as executive features editor for NetworkWorld. Prior to his time at NetworkWorld, Neal was business editor at Middlesex News. He studied at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. His work has been published in Tech Target, Information Week, Robotics Business Review, and other publications.

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