Tenable expands technology partner program around new Tenable.io solution

Tenable.io, which is focused on the enterprise, is a new solution they launched at the beginning of the year which adds container security and web application scanning to vulnerability management.

At the RSA Conference, cybersecurity vendor Tenable Network Security is announcing a significant expansion of their Tenable Technology Integration Partner (TIP) program. TIP partners receive access to fully documented and easy-to-use API and an SDK to simplify the export and import of vulnerability, asset, threat and other data.

Tenable is a long-time player in the vulnerabiilty management space, which was formed early in the century. They are best known as the creator of the Nessus vulnerability scanner, although they do have a broad portfolio of products, with a strong presence across the globe, across verticals, and in the federal space. Since 2014, they have gone to market exclusively through channel partners.

“Our biggest differentiation is true continuous visibility of environments beyond traditional active scanning, including passive discovery of assets and assessments of networks,” said Corey Bodzin, VP of Product Management at Tenable. “We have over 20,000 customers worldwide, and are active in SMB and consumer, but the company is really targeted at the enterprise.”

The enterprise is the focus of Tenable’s newest offering, Tenable.io. which was released in January. In addition to vulnerability management, it features a couple of new elements – Container Security and Web Application Scanning.

“Nessus is a tool for the broad spectrum, but for enterprises, Tenable.io is now our offering.” Bodzin said. “It has a lot of commonality with theNessus API, and the same file format is used.”

Bodzin also emphasized that Tenable.io has been designed to be easy for integration partners to work with.

“Tenable.io has a revamped IO that enables integration partners to take advantage of the new capabilities, and it is supported with an SDK, that we just released, that makes it simple for partners to update their capabilities to support it.”

The TIP program, which was launched in 2015, has been re-invigorated and re-emphasized for Tenable.io.

“Our founders were prescient enough when we started delivering Nessus to make it open, believing that customers would want to share data we collect with other tools,” Bodzin said. “Informally, we had other tech companies doing that. TIP formalized this and added tiers to it, and this has resulted in this huge ecosystem.”

Out of the gate, Tenable is emphasizing joint integrations with BMC Software, Bradford Networks, CyberArk and ForeScout, all of whom worked with Tenable to be ready for this announcement with pre-built integrations with their respective patch management, automation and orchestration, password vault and network access control solutions.

“We are emphasizing this select number of players with compelling innovations, but the number of partners involved is a much broader number than that,” Bodzin said.

“We are very excited about Tenable.io and this program,” he added. “The open API, SDK and programmatic focus on partners will it easier for customers to leverage it.”