Scalable, high-performing architecture with the industry’s broadest deployment flexibility

The Rapid7 Nexpose architecture was designed to support organizations of any size for maximum scalability, performance, ease of deployment and manageability. Nexpose has the broadest deployment flexibility of any solution in the industry providing organizations with complete flexibility of options including software, appliance, virtual machine, laptop, managed service and private cloud deployments.

Organizations can also easily mix and match any of the deployment options, for example, to support security assessments in the field with mobile laptops while leveraging virtual appliances for centralized security assessments of data centers. MSSPs can easily leverage Nexpose’s multi-tenant architecture to maintain silos of information among its various clients while achieving economies of scale of shared infrastructure.

Flexible Nexpose Console and Distributed Scan Engine Configuration

The Nexpose architecture allows for centralized management of scan data through the web-based Nexpose Security Console, while allowing users to deploy stand alone scan engines throughout distributed environments. Remote scanning engines can be placed strategically throughout the environment to scan assets locally and have scan data sent back to the central console for easy asset management and reporting. The console allows users to define and manage assets, configure scans, store scan data, and generate reports. The scanning engine performs scanning, threat detection, and vulnerability identification. The database is stored in the console and the console manages all communication and updating from the Nexpose Scan Engine.The Nexpose distributed scan engine architecture and scan engine pooling enable users to create pools of scan engines to perform scanning. As customer demands grow, additional scan engines can be added to the pool to linearly increase performance without additional downtime or maintenance. In addition, Nexpose uses an asynchronous communications protocol between engines and consoles to maximize efficiency.

All scans in Nexpose are network based and do not install agents on any target systems. Nexpose has the option to perform remote assessments, local checks with or without credentials. Adding credentials provides the same perspective an agent would provide without the impact on the machine being scanned.

Centralized Update Server

Product and vulnerability updates are pushed automatically to each client via Nexpose’s central update server to ensure that organizations are up-to-date on the latest threats and product capabilities. Content updates provide regular vulnerability updates every two weeks and on-demand based on community activity. Microsoft Patch Tuesday content updates are provided as part Rapid7’s 24-hour SLA. Rapid7 provides maintenance releases every six weeks, and a full release (minor or major) every quarter.

Extensive XML Vulnerability Database

Rapid7 Nexpose scans for more than 28,000 vulnerability definitions and 85,000 vulnerability checks across networks, operating systems, databases, servers and applications. Based on Rapid7's ownership of Metaploit with the world's largest quality assured database of exploits, Rapid7 can more quickly update vulnerability checks based on real-world exploits than its competitors. Rapid7 incorporates the exploit information directly into Nexpose, providing an indication of actual exploitability that traditional vulnerability scanners lack.

Rapid7 is also the only provider in the vulnerability management space to make its complete vulnerability database available for free directly on its Web site to any organization looking to gain insight into the emerging threat landscape even without purchasing any of Rapid7’s products.

Artificial Intelligence Engine

Nexpose uses an expert intelligence system, JESS (Jave Expert System Shell), to mimic an attack by chaining together vulnerabilities across multiple layers including network, OS, web application and database.

Ease of integration

Rapid7’s architecture has been optimized to facilitate integration with a number of enterprise security solutions. Rapid7 Nexpose ships with the XML-based OpenAPI™, enabling easy integration with a more than 25 security products pre-packaged, out-of-the box. The OpenAPI can be used to easily extend integration to any other enterprise or security product. Learn more about Nexpose’s ease of integration.