The main public reviews I am aware of are: 

http://www.networkcomputing.com/1201/1201f1b1.html 
This is quite old now. Mind you, that means ISS did not get reviewed for its
abysmal update process from V6 to V7 (see my notes in the ISS mailing list).

http://www.nwfusion.com/reviews/2002/0204bgtoc.html
Favours Retina.

http://infosecuritymag.techtarget.com/2003/jan/cover.shtml
Web app scanners reviews. Does not include Nessus.

http://infosecuritymag.techtarget.com/2003/mar/cover.shtml
favours ISS, but see the Nessus mailing list thread:
http://list.nessus.org/nessus/0303/5074.html

But I guess the best and most honest comparison is to scan some of your
systems and show what vulnerabilities are missed by each scanner. I'd expect
Nessus to do very well.

I'd love to see a fair comparison of scanners and what they detect. For
example the Jan 2003 app scanner review did not include Nessus, ISS or
similar scanner, which certainly would have detected many of the listed
vulnerabilities.

As for migrating the tests, I think I'd tackle from first principles, and
ask why you have a complex ISS policy at all? You can go a long way with a
"try everything 'cos the black hats will" policy, perhaps in conjunction
with "all but DoS tests" for production systems.

Andrew Yeomans

-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of David Kyle Sayre
Sent: 23 December 2003 21:34
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: ISS vs. Nessus


Hello all,

We have been using ISS Internet scanner and nessus (among other tools), 
and we would like to start combining, and where appropriate, moving 
tests from Internet scanner to nessus. We have a large Internet scanner 
policy, and instead of going through it by hand, I was wondering if 
anyone had a good correlation of Internet scanner and nessus reports? I 
tried using the CVE's, but that only gets us so far, we still have over 
300 test to try and correlate, and the CVE's do not map to X-Force 
numbers (and Internet scanner tests) very well.

Also I was looking for a good vulnerability scanner comparison to show 
to manager types. Most of our managers are for the move to nessus, but 
some are still reluctant, and I would like to put as many nails in ISS's 
coffin as possible.

Thanks,
David Sayre
Los Alamos National Labs

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