Note: This section applies to Scanner Appliance users only.
Select a scanner to apply to the task: Default, External, All Scanners in Asset Group, or a scanner appliance in your account.
When scanner appliances are used, the polling frequency as defined for each scanner appliance has an effect on the latency between the time when a scan request is made and the time when the scan is launched by the service. Select any scanner appliance and click View to see more information.
Select this option to use the default scanner in each target asset group to scan the group's IPs. When the target includes multiple asset groups, the service distributes the scan task to the various scanners (scanner appliances and/or external scanners) and compiles a single report with scan results. You can assign the default scanner to an asset group by editing the asset group configuration.
Select this option to use the External scanners to scan IPs on your perimeter. External scanners must be able to access your target IPs. A list of IP addresses for the service's External scanners is available on the About page (Help > About) under General Information.
External scanners are used automatically when individual IPs are included in the scan target. If those IPs are private use internal IPs, you must select a scanner appliance in your account for the task. In this case, you cannot select External, Default or All Scanners in Asset Group.
Select this option to use the scanner parallelization feature. This feature is available for vulnerability scans and compliance scans. When selected, the service distributes the scan task to a pool of scanner appliances in each target asset group to scan the group's IPs. The scan task is distributed to the top five appliances listed in the group and compiles a single report with scan results.
Before you use this feature, it's best practice to view your target asset groups to identify which appliances are in the top five slots for the group and make any necessary changes. For an asset group with more than five appliances, you can select any appliance in the group and move it into one of the top five slots using the Up and Down buttons.
Note that a scan task can only be distributed across scanner appliances that have the same vulnerability signatures version and the same scanning engine version at the time of the scan. You can view version information for a scanner appliance from the scanner appliances list (Tools > Scanner Appliances). If one of the scanner appliances in the pool has a version that does not match the other scanner appliances, it will not be used as this may have a deleterious effect on reporting. If some scanner appliances have identical versions and others do not, then the appliances with the most matching versions are used, regardless if the software is not as current. For example, if 3 scanners have the same vulnerability signatures and scanning engine versions and the other 2 scanners have a different version, then the 3 matching scanners are used.
Select a scanner appliance in your account to use the appliance to scan private use internal IPs. The selected scanner will be used to scan all target hosts, including asset groups and individual IPs.
Note that it's best practice to use default scanners when scanning asset groups. For this reason, you may want to create separate tasks for scanning asset groups and individual IPs.