Rapid7 Nexpose Introduces IPv6 Discovery and Scanning Capabilities, and Reduces Signal-to-Noise Ratio for Vulnerability Management, Enabling Security Professionals to Focus on Highest Priority Issues

Business Wire

Wednesday, August 8th 2012

Rapid7, the leading provider of security risk intelligence solutions, today announced that the new version of its vulnerability management solution, Rapid7® Nexpose, introduces features for discovering and scanning IPv6 assets that organizations may not even know they have. The new version also further reduces the signal-to-noise ratio of assessing security risk by filtering out unnecessary background noise that makes it hard for security professionals to identify and focus on the highest priority security issues. These features simplify vulnerability management for busy security professionals who must address hugely complex security challenges on a daily basis.

“Security professionals are overwhelmed by information. It’s increasingly complex for them to even identify what assets the organization has, let alone associated threats and the steps needed to improve their security posture,” said Richard Perkett, vice president of Engineering at Rapid7. “Rapid7 simplifies this process by pioneering dynamic discovery of assets that are otherwise hard to track, such as IPv6 and virtual assets. Combined with Nexpose’s remediation prioritization and vulnerability filtering, the result is efficiency in identifying the threats and actions that will make a real difference to the organization’s security posture, thereby increasing the credibility of security teams across the organization.”

Discovery and Scanning for IPv6

Approximately 95% of IPv4 address space has already been allocated¹ and with devices increasingly requiring one or many IPs, the transition to the next generation, IPv6, is not far off. In fact, while most organizations believe they are not yet deploying IPv6, many devices are enabled for it by default. This represents a significant risk due to a number of factors, starting with a lack of IPv6 readiness in security products. Meanwhile, attackers are starting to recognize the opportunities in IPv6 as an attack vector and can tunnel in through IPv4 devices to then exploit the IPv6 vulnerabilities currently not being identified and addressed.

This threat is amplified by the difficulty that security professionals encounter in finding IPv6 assets in existing IPv4 production environments. The new edition of Nexpose addresses this by dynamically discovering IPv6 and IPv4 assets and scanning both for vulnerabilities. With Nexpose you can:

Perform an IPv6 discovery over an IPv4 network, thereby enabling organizations to disable IPv6 devices in IPv4 networks as they could present a potential security risk
Create a dynamic asset group and find assets with known IPv4 addresses that also have previously undiscovered IPv6 addresses, creating significant efficiencies by automating traditionally manual processes
Run a report to show IPv6 enabled devices
Conduct a scan to discover vulnerabilities in these IPv6 devices
Export data to Metasploit and then run a risk assessment to validate risk based on exploits

“Nexpose can easily discover and scan IPv6 assets even if users don’t think IPv6 is relevant to them yet. The solution works directly from the user’s IPv4 environment to help them assess whether they have any IPv6 devices, for example, routers that are enabled by default, and if they have any relevant vulnerabilities,” explained Perkett.

Vulnerability Filtering to Reduce Signal-to-Noise Ratio