Action Required: Preparation for January 2026 Tenable Security Center Feed Update
We are writing to announce an important upcoming change to the Tenable Security Center feed data. Starting in mid-January 2026, the size of Tenable Security Center feeds will increase due to the addition of new Vulnerability Priority Rating (VPR) data; this data will be available in Tenable Security Center 6.8, anticipated for release later in Q1 2026. This update ensures you continue to receive comprehensive vulnerability data, but it requires immediate action to ensure your environment is prepared. What you need to do To prevent the feed size from causing PHP memory exhaustion in your environment, please follow the resolution path for your specific version: Versions 6.5.1 – 6.7.2: Patch 202601.1 is now available. Applying this patch will automatically modify the PHP configuration to increase the memory limit. Versions Prior to 6.5.1: Follow the instructions outlined in this Knowledge Base article to modify the PHP configuration. Note: Tenable Security Center consoles with less than 8 GB RAM may need to have their hardware resources updated. Review Tenable Security Center hardware recommendations Why this matters Taking action now allows you to adopt a proactive approach to this feed expansion, ensuring your nightly updates continue seamlessly. Prevent SC Feed Update Failures: Without this fix, SC Feed updates may fail and log an "Allowed memory size... exhausted" error or terminate abnormally with error status '255'. Protect Disk Space: Failing feed updates can leave behind orphaned files in /opt/sc/data/feed.XXXXX folders, which may build up and cause disk space issues over time. Access our related documentation to learn more: Tenable Security Center Patch 202601.1 (2026-01-06) Knowledge Base: Tenable Security Center Feed Update Failing with "terminated abnormally with error status '255'" Due to PHP Memory Exhaustion
Tenable Post-Quantum Cryptography Inventory Support
Summary The advent of quantum computing presents a significant threat to current cryptographic algorithms. Organizations worldwide are beginning the critical transition to post-quantum cryptography (PQC) resistant algorithms to ensure long-term data security. Government mandates, such as the U.S. National Security Memorandum 10 (NSM-10), outlines deadlines for PQC migration and specific actions agencies must take to migrate vulnerable systems. Our PQC support is designed to help customers inventory use of TLS and SSH quantum-resistant and vulnerable algorithms within their infrastructure using remote Nessus-based scans. Cipher Inventory and Reporting Post-Quantum Cipher Plugins Two remote-based scan informational reporting plugins for TLS and SSH protocols inform customers of their transition posture according to NIST Post-Quantum Encryption Standards. Services Using Post Quantum Cryptography: Reports on services equipped with at least one post-quantum cipher. It will specify which post-quantum ciphers were discovered, reporting by port and protocol. Services Not Using Post Quantum Cryptography: Reports on services that support no post-quantum ciphers. These plugins will be enabled by default and included in existing scans. Cryptographic Inventory Plugin Reporting To enable a JSON-based inventory of each target by service and cipher, enable through either a preference on your Advanced Network Scan or by running the Cryptographic Inventory scan template. These preferences will initially be supported in Nessus and Tenable Vulnerability Management. They are planned to be added to Tenable Security Center at a later date. Warning: Enabling this preference through the Advanced Network Scan is expected to increase the overall size of the plugin output per target and resulting Nessus database size. If you do not need to produce this inventory at all or on your regular scan cadence, it’s recommended to instead run the Cryptographic Inventory scan template to decrease the potential impact to your normal scan results. Options to Enable Inventory Reporting Advanced Scan Preference Post Quantum Cryptography Scan Template Cryptographic Inventory Plugin Details The plugin enabled with the preference or scan template is an information plugin called Target Cipher Inventory. Within the output of this plugin, you will find a JSON structure containing the TLS and SSH inventories for the scanned target. You can export this inventory based on plugin output using the Tenable API if needed. For TLS, the structure contains: Attribute Definition Encaps Protocol encapsulation employed such as TLSv1, TLSv2, TLSv3 Port Port used for TLS communication Curve Group Encryption method Ciphersuite Algorithm used to secure the TLS connection For SSH, the structure contains: Attribute Definition Proto Protocol of SSH Port Port used for SSH communication Name Algorithm used to secure the protocol Type Use of the named algorithm such as “message auth” Release Date Tenable Vulnerability Management and Tenable Nessus: December 8, 2025 Tenable Security Center: - December 8, 2025 for the informational plugins - Cryptographic Inventory scan template release to be determined
Improvement: Handling Component Installs for Vulnerability Assessment
Background On Friday, February 6, 2026, Tenable Research published a plugin update that changed the way component installs are assessed for vulnerabilities. Those changes are outlined in a previous release highlight: Component Installs Require Paranoid Checks, This update essentially reverts this change, while adding new functionality to allow users to choose whether or not they want component installs assessed for vulnerabilities. Component installs are no longer influenced by scan paranoia settings. What are “Component Installs”? Software components, such as applications or language modules/libraries, are installed and managed by a primary "parent" package or application. The crucial point is that these components often cannot be updated individually. Instead, their vulnerability assessment and upgrade are entirely dependent on an update of the parent package. For instance, the SQLite database component is installed as part of the Trend Micro Deep Security Agent and is updated only when the Agent itself is updated. Nessus uses several factors to determine if a detected product is a component, or a standalone installation, including: Was the product installed by a package manager? These products are not considered components, as they are managed by the package manager and not a “parent” application Is the component a “language library”, i.e. a library or module used by the interpreter of a programming language like Python or Node.js? These enumerated libraries are marked as components by default. Does the product reside in a directory that is recognized for installations that are not component-based? Changes By default, component installs are once again assessed for vulnerabilities, as was the case prior to the release of the aforementioned update. If users wish to turn this setting off, so that component installs will not be assessed by generic vulnerability detection plugins, they can do so via the newly created scan preference. The end result of this change should be that fewer “false positives”, i.e. reported vulnerabilities for components that are “owned” by another application, are shown in scan results. Components with vulnerabilities that cannot be addressed independently of the “parent” application will not show in scan results. However, some customers have expressed a desire to see these vulnerabilities in their scan results anyway, to ensure full awareness of the risk profile of every application in their environment. This is still possible through the updated scan configuration settings. To modify this setting in your scan policy, go to Settings > Assessment > Accuracy > Override Normal Accuracy > Assess component installs for potential vulnerabilities. This setting is ON (checkbox is ticked) by default, so users must enable the Override Normal Accuracy checkbox (which is OFF / unchecked by default) if they wish to disable the setting and ensure that component installs are not assessed by generic vulnerability detection plugins in this scan. Please note that this update makes no other changes to the existing paranoia logic, outside of what is described above. For now, “Managed”, “Managed by OS” and “Backported” installs are still controlled by the Show/Avoid potential false alarms radio button. How can I tell if the detected install is a component or not? In addition to the above, we have also updated the relevant detection plugins so they will show if the component flag is set or not. At present, this includes detection plugins for OpenSSL, Curl, LibCurl, Apache HTTPD, Apache Tomcat, SQLite, Python Packages, Node.js modules and, soon to follow, Ruby and Nuget libraries. Using plugin ID 174788, SQLite Detection (Windows), here is a before and after example of the expected plugin output. Before: After: Expected Impact With the new default setting in place, users should anticipate an increase in vulnerability findings for the products in scope, returning to a level similar to what was observed before the first update. If users do not wish to surface these additional potential vulnerabilities, they should disable the "Assess component installs for potential vulnerabilities” setting. If the new scan preference is disabled, the volume of findings will remain consistent with current levels, when scanning with normal accuracy (paranoia) settings. Affected Plugins 12288, global_settings.nasl (updated to support the new scan policy preference) Any plugin that operates downstream of those in the list below: SQLite: 174788 - sqlite_nix_installed.nasl 171077 - sqlite_win_installed.nasl OpenSSL: 168007 - openssl_nix_installed.nasl 168149 - openssl_win_installed.nasl Curl: 182774 - curl_nix_installed.nasl 171860 - curl_win_installed.nasl LibCurl: 182848 - libcurl_nix_installed.nasl Apache HTTPD: 141394 - apache_http_server_nix_installed.nasl 141262 - apache_httpd_win_installed.nasl Apache Tomcat: 130175 - apache_tomcat_nix_installed.nasl 130590 - tomcat_win_installed.nasl Python Packages: 164122 - python_packages_installed_nix.nasl 139241 - python_win_installed.nasl Node.js Modules: 178772 - nodejs_modules_linux_installed.nasl 179440 - nodejs_modules_mac_installed.nasl 200172 - nodejs_modules_win_installed.nasl Targeted Release Date Tenable Nessus and Vulnerability Management: Monday, March 9, 2026 (ETA 22:30 Eastern Standard Time) Tenable Security Center: Monday, March 16, 2026
Tenable product update: Standardizing Tenable risk scoring
At Tenable, we are committed to providing the most accurate, defensible, and actionable view of organizational risk. To achieve this, we must continually refine the intelligence that powers your prioritization. On July 1, 2026, we are implementing a series of foundational updates to our risk scoring engines. As part of this update, you may see changes to your risk scores, depending on the Tenable product(s) you own. These changes simplify your workflow by standardizing scoring on a single, high-fidelity model for vulnerability and asset risk. The new standard for VPR For the past several months, many of you have utilized VPR (Beta) to gain deeper insights into exploitability. We are excited to announce that on July 1, this model will be promoted to the primary Vulnerability Priority Rating (VPR) across the Tenable platform. By standardizing on this advanced model, we are retiring legacy VPR scoring to ensure every customer benefits from our most sophisticated threat intelligence. The new version of VPR incorporates more threat intelligence and vulnerability metadata so that you can focus on the 1.6% of vulnerabilities that actually matter. Better context through enhanced asset classification Alongside the VPR update, we are enhancing our asset classification engine. This update improves how we identify the function and importance of assets across your entire attack surface, including Cloud, OT, and third-party devices. As a result, customers with access to Asset Criticality Ratings (ACR) will see these scores more accurately reflect real-world business risk. What this means for you These are backend enhancements designed to provide immediate value with zero manual configuration. On July 1, your dashboards, reports, and APIs will automatically reflect these updated metrics. Because both VPR and ACR serve as inputs to Cyber Exposure Score (CES) and Asset Exposure Score (AES), customers using these scores may see changes that reflect a more accurate understanding of exposure. Customer FAQ What happens to the VPR (Beta) score in the Tenable UI? The Beta label will be removed. The high-fidelity model you’ve been previewing will become the standard VPR. The legacy version of VPR will be retired to ensure a single, unified source or truth. Do I need to rewrite my custom API scripts using VPR? No. For customers using APIs, updated values will be mapped into legacy VPR fields on the back end to ensure compatibility and a smooth transition for your scripts and third-party tools. How does this affect my SLAs? Because many organizations use VPR as their operational prioritization layer, your SLA statistics and remediation tracking will now reflect the more precise scoring model. This helps ensure your team is meeting response goals for the vulnerabilities that pose the highest actual risk. How does Enhanced Asset Classification affect my scores? The system now automatically identifies the function and criticality of assets across Cloud, OT, and third-party sources. This improved context leads to more accurate Asset Criticality Rating (ACR) adjustments. For customers with access to ACR, this ensures your most critical business assets are effectively prioritized. For a detailed guide on our enhanced VPR, check out this FAQ. Want to see the why behind our scoring? View our scoring explained.Introducing Tenable Security Center 6.8
Our latest release, Tenable Security Center 6.8, introduces several new features and enhancements to streamline your security operations: Focus on real risk: Stop chasing 60% of Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) as High or Critical. Start focusing on the 3% of CVEs that truly matter. Enhanced VPR logic and new AI-powered insights explain why an exposure is significant and provide clear mitigation guidance based on regional and industry-specific threat actor behavior. Streamlined infrastructure: We’ve unified IPv4, IPv6, and Agent repositories into a single, flexible Asset Repository type to reduce administrative overhead and give you more freedom in how you bucket and analyze your data. You can now target any data, including agent, network scan, and passive data, into any repository. Asset grouping and customization: The Explore Assets page includes new "Group By" options for Microsoft ID, Network, System Type, and Asset Criticality Rating (ACR). Other enhancements to the Explore Assets page include the ability to edit ACR scores (available in Tenable Security Center Plus) directly in the Explore interface. You can also export findings and installed software for specific assets to a comma-separated values (CSV) file. Background queries: Start a query and keep working. Tenable Security Center now processes long-running asset searches in the background. Scan optimization: Prevent performance issues with new per-host timeouts that keep your scan schedules on track to prevent a single host from increasing overall scan time. Enhanced security: Use at-rest encryption for External PostgreSQL databases and expanded PAM integration for Delinea and BeyondTrust. Before you upgrade: Tenable Security Center 6.8 supports upgrades from version 6.4.0 and later. Please review the latest updates to Tenable Security Center hardware specifications in the release notes for optimal performance.Now available: VM-Native OT Discovery
VM-Native OT Discovery introduces a powerful new asset discovery engine directly inside Tenable Vulnerability Management and Tenable Security Center. This allows you to identify and profile OT assets—including PLCs, HMIs, and IoT devices—using the VM tools you already own. Use a new "OT Recon" scan template to perform safe, protocol-aware active queries. No additional hardware or sensors are needed. Get started in minutes. Discovered assets count toward your existing license at a 1:1 ratio. Watch this 2-minute guided demo to see VM-Native Discovery in action. For more information, please refer to the user guides for Tenable Vulnerability Management (Discovery Settings, Scan Templates) and Tenable Security Center (Scan Policy Options). For continuous monitoring and access to a wide range of other advanced OT/CPS security capabilities, consider upgrading to Tenable OT Security to maximize the value of your Tenable One deployment.Improvement to Printer OS Fingerprinting
Updated: April 3, 2026 Summary Scanned printers will now have an OS artefact surfaced in their scan host metadata if the target has been identified as a printer when the “Scan Network Printers” policy option is disabled. This change will not cause any additional asset licenses to be consumed within Tenable VM or Tenable Security Center. Background Printers are notoriously unstable scan targets. Oftentimes, they can behave erratically when scanned, so some users prefer to avoid scanning them altogether. At present, there is a switch in the scan policies to prevent further scanning of a host when it's identified as a printer. To enable this setting, go to Settings -> Host Discovery -> Fragile devices - Scan Network Printers (Currently, this is a checkbox setting, default value “off”). With that said, how can the scanner know the target is a printer if it cannot be scanned? In reality, the scanner still performs very basic fingerprinting (usually via SNMP) in order to gather enough information to make an educated guess at the device type. When the scan target is thought to be a printer, it essentially gets marked as “Host/dead" in the scan KB. When this happens, the scanner will not perform any further active scanning. Changes With this update, the fingerprint used to identify the printer as such, will now be stored in the scan Knowledge Base (KB) so it can be processed by os_fingerprint2.nasl ("Post-scan OS Identification", plugin ID 83349) and surfaced as metadata in the scan result. The relevant policy setting located at Settings -> Host Discovery -> Fragile devices -> Scan Network Printers. With this update, the printer's OS information will now be surfaced if it is available, regardless of the selected value for this setting. Impact Users can now see the OS information for their printer devices that would have otherwise gone unreported if the scan is not configured to “Scan Network Printers”. As plugin ID 83349 generates no plugin output, only an “operating-system” tag will be added to the scan result (and stored in an exported .nessus file). This information will be visible only the in “Host/Asset Details” section of the Tenable product UI, i.e: Tenable Nessus: Scans -> [Folder] -> [Individual Scan Result] - > Host Details -> OS (sidebar) Tenable Vulnerability Management: Explore -> Assets -> [Asset] -> Details -> Operating System Scans -> Vulnerability Management Scans -> [Individual Scan Result] -> Scan Details -> Asset Details -> Operating System Tenable Security Center: Analysis -> IP Summary -> [IP address] -> System Information -> OS Scans -> Scan Results -> [Individual Scan Result] -> IP Summary -> [IP address] -> System Information -> OS Note, we expect this information to surface mainly in individual scan results. It would only be present in cumulative asset details if a licensed asset already exists for the target in question. This update will not cause additional assets to be created or consume any additional licenses. Affected Plugins 83349 - os_fingerprint2.nasl 11933 - dont_scan_printers.nasl 22481 - dont_scan_settings.nasl Targeted Release Date Wednesday, March 4, 2026
Tenable Security Center 6.7: Modern Visibility, Smarter Automation, Stronger Performance
With Tenable Security Center 6.7, you gain a faster, clearer, and more flexible way to manage vulnerabilities across your environment. This release modernizes the experience, strengthens automation, and improves performance to help you reduce risk more efficiently. What’s New: Explore – Assets (Preview): See your environment through a modernized interface with structured data, flexible filtering, and grouping tools that make asset analysis faster and easier. Get a walkthrough > Triggered Agent Scanning: Automate Tenable Agent scans using your own triggers—like time intervals or file changes—so vulnerabilities are found as soon as they appear. See in action > Credential Verification Scan Policy: Confirm that your Windows and Unix credentials are working as expected with a simple scan policy designed to verify authentication success. Watch demo on demand > What’s Improved: Consistent Asset Tracking: Asset tracking logic now matches Universal Repository behavior, giving you consistent visibility across IPv4 and IPv6 assets. Simplified Naming: Asset Lists are now Asset Tags, and object identifiers (formerly Tags) are now Labels for greater clarity. Smarter Scanning: Advanced scan policies can now toggle off new plugin families by default—so your customized scan policies don’t change unexpectedly. Get more details > More Accurate Results: Configure Freeze Windows to mark scans as Complete (not Partial) when impacted, so you always get full visibility into your results. See more here > Optimized Performance: Enjoy faster scan ingest and query performance, plus improved PostgreSQL security and efficiency. Expanded Integrations: Use updated PAM support for BeyondTrust and VMware vCenter, along with enhanced Red Hat repository mapping capabilities (more information is available here). Before You Upgrade: You can upgrade directly from Security Center 6.3.0 or higher. Hardware specifications have been updated—systems below the new recommendations will still upgrade, but performance may vary. Tenable Support can help you fine-tune configurations if needed. Important Changes in 6.7.0: Web Application Scanning via Nessus is deprecated. Move your web app scanners to Tenable Core or Docker-based scanners. Kubernetes deployment support ends in this version. Security Center Kubernetes customers will migrate to Tenable Enclave Security, which delivers a secure, modern foundation for Kubernetes-based environments. With these updates, you’ll gain a more responsive, scalable, and unified way to secure your environment—helping you move from detection to action with greater speed and confidence. [Read the Full Release Notes] or [Upgrade Now]
Webinar: Customer Product Update Webinars - July 2025
Check out the latest monthly Customer Update Webinars below and save your spot! Recordings will be posted after the live webinar has concluded. Tenable WAS, July 8, 2025, 11 am ET: Join us for a deep dive into recently released WAS features and capabilities. Tenable Nessus, July 8, 2025, 1 pm ET: Testing for specific CVEs with Nessus. Tenable OT Security, July 9, 2025, 11 am ET: Learn how Tenable OT Security 4.3 unlocks unprecedented visibility and control across your OT/IT environment. Tenable Vulnerability Management, July 9, 2025, 1 pm ET: Credentialed scans versus uncredentialed scans and how to use managed credentials. Tenable One, July 10, 2025, 11 am ET: Learn how Tenable One can now ingest important security context from non-Tenable security tools to help better identify, prioritize and reduce cyber risk. Tenable Security Center, July 10, 2025, 1 pm ET: OS breakdown: reporting exposures by operating system.Release Highlight - Large Differential Feed Update Notification
Summary Due to integration of new binaries into the plugin feed, there will be a larger than normal differential plugin feed update. Potential Impacts: The addition of the binaries is expected to add approximately 37MB of new content to the plugin feed. The impact is expected to be minimal for Nessus customers. SC customers will see the biggest impact of approximately 230MB due to how the differential feed updates are built. The differential update does not apply to Nessus agents as the binaries were not added there. For Tenable Security Center customers, you can configure the plugins to update on a schedule or switch to manual updates for an optimal time window. Target Release Date March 4, 2026
