Rapid7 InsightVM Reviews

In our first use case, we wanted to map the solution back to our NIS (Network and Information Systems) framework and the CIS (Center for Internet Security that publishes Critical Security Controls). That is the first part. The second part of this same use case is that we wanted to do continuous vulnerability scanning. That is we wanted to scan the complete network every month at a minimum. What we are finding out in practice is that we are scanning every week because of our network and the size of it. In the end, we are able to get even more aggressive than our original position.  

The next use case was we wanted to identify the assets that were in our environment. We can identify how many servers we have, we have identified how many desktops and laptops we have got, et cetera. To that point is where we were looking at pretty good.  

Our next use case was the obvious next step where we wanted to identify vulnerabilities. That meant identifying all the vulnerabilities from critical all the way down to the low. We needed to know what they were and how many. Also, we wanted to know how many are unique versus how many there are in total.  

We also wanted to get away from tracking vulnerabilities on spreadsheets. It was incredibly cumbersome, incredibly hard to do, and it was not efficient. The IT guys kept telling me that they did not know how to fix certain issues. So I thought we needed to do CVSS ( Common Vulnerability Scoring System) on it. They were a bit resistant to that idea. Well, I was not about to start doing that for them. So InsightVM gives us the ability now to track the issues and communicate how the remediation should occur to fix vulnerabilities.  

Then the last thing is we wanted was to have a dashboard for management. We had to have a dashboard to be able to have a CIO (Chief Information Officer) log in and find out where we sit with things. Like where do we sit with remediation where are we failing to make expected progress and things of that nature.  

Rapid7 gave us the ability to do a lot of that, and it was not a cumbersome tool to implement. It is good and fits well with pretty much all of our use case needs. It only falls short in a couple of spots.  

Now that we have been using it, I think there are some things Rapid7 needs to consider and address in improving InsightsVM. I think the reporting piece has room for improvement. While they have a lot of reporting, and some of the reporting is really good, there are some things that I think they can do better on. They need to add some categories that are not covered and expand a few things that have only surface coverage.  

I would love to be on a customer advisory board so that I could provide feedback to them and show them what their solution does not do. For example, I could point out things that I can not do with a widget on the dashboard that I would expect it to be able to do. Things like that might help them improve the product from a real user's perspective. That could amount to a lot of different things, but ideally, it would focus on your most common issues.  

There were a couple of things I know that the security analyst and I were looking at and we were wondering why Rapid7 would choose to implement it that way. Like if they did not include something we needed as part of a report, we could not do what we expected when running the report. That is a little frustrating. I would say that they need to spend some more time evaluating enhancements suggested by customers so that they can get those things implemented and round out the user experience. That is the reason why I think a CAB (Customer Advisory Board) is important for vendors like Rapid7.  

We rolled it out in our operations between June and September. So we have been using it since June of 2020.  

I do not know at this point just how scalable this solution is. We bought it for an enterprise solution, so our enterprise need is getting solved. I do not know how much scaling we have to do on top of that. I do not like the fact that as a vulnerability scanner, this product has a fault to a certain extent. We want to be able to scan applications dynamically and this solution does not give us that ability. It does for web apps. But if you are a company that does not have a lot of web apps, something is getting left uncovered.  

Let's say you have a third-party app. You go to that third-party developer and you ask if they have ever done a security attestation on the application. They look at you and like they have no idea what the heck you are talking about and they have no idea what that means. It would be good, in that case, to be able to take the Rapid7 product and point it at that third-party app and scan it dynamically. That way you can get code vulnerabilities or functional vulnerabilities. What would otherwise be a problem is something you could identify and isolate. If Rapid7 looked at the scripting and identified a secret injection attack at line 1,141 — or something to that effect — it could be vetted. It does do that, but it only does that on web applications. Why stop there?  

In order to solve that issue, you have to go out and buy another third-party product that allows you to scan the application to do dynamic or static vulnerability scanning on the application. I do not like that omission because I had that capability with Qualys. We could take Qualys and we could point it at an application and get dynamic scanning reports from it. It told us a line that needed to be fixed and everything.  

I have not yet gotten into the bowels of that discussion with Rapid7, but I want to. What I did find out about it is our current setup does not cover that type of potential application vulnerability. It does allow for some scanning of web applications, but we are not a company that has a lot of web applications. We are not a retail organization. We do not sell anything. We do have web applications, but they are mainly used for marketing.  

We probably have close to a dozen people in our organization who are currently interfacing in some way with Rapid7 InsightVM. That part is scalable. The utility does have those certain limitations, however.  

We have a client service manager for Rapid7 tech support. He is an appointed customer service manager where we have him for the first year. We are working with him to identify things, correct things, implement, attune, and things like that. Because of that relationship, I do not have a need to call their regular tech support right now. We just worked through the service manager.  

I have had some previous experience with Qualys and using Rapid7 now is really a matter of what I chose to bring on based on my personal user experience. Each has its own advantages and neither is a bad product.   

The initial installation and setup were pretty much straightforward. We did run into an issue with credentialing. We ended up working through that and got that correct.  

I think it was done fairly quickly overall. When we ran into that credentialing issue, we spent about three weeks or so — almost a month — working through that. The issue meant involving some guys from some of the other IT teams and getting them into the mix to help us out.  

I had implemented InsightVM before at another company. I liked it when we were using it there which is why it ended up here. I have also had previous experience with Qualys. I did not have the time or the luxury to sit back and do a full analysis, RFI (Request for Information) and RFP (Request for Proposal) when we had to bring on the solution. We are not the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), we are not the NSA (National Security Agency). We do not need any sophisticated solution or anything like that. We just needed something we could bring in, get online fairly quickly, and get running to do reports. Rapid7 InsightsVM fit the bill.  

On a scale of one to ten (where one is the worst and ten is the best), I would rate Rapid7 InsightVM as probably about an eight-out-of-ten. It gets an eight rather than scoring higher just because of some of the other stuff that I wish we had.  

The primary use case of this solution is for critical business applications for the web. We have also implemented it to identify when we are changing and an older system like the application client-server, the server two, the network equipment like switch routers, and security solutions.

The most valuable feature for us is the different types of reporting it provides. For example, the compliance reporting, compliance with the international standard in which we are certified and compliant. This is important for us to escalate the dashboard to our top management.

We need to scan and identify the different RPGs, the critical ones and the major ones that can generate risk or a measure of risk. We generate the reporting from the system and relay the report to our internal developers. We have our internal developers in the bank.

This solution integrates with another module in Metasploit, that doesn't exist in the other solutions. It is subscribed to on our roadmap, but we chose to implement both Nexppose and AppSpider.

This solution is stable. It's a good solution.

This solution is scalable.

It takes two people to manage this solution and to be the backup for the succession plan. Our manager has access and performs audits.

Technical support is good and responsive.

In this current company, they were using Qualys and I convinced the management to change to Rapid 7.

After every event, we are required to automize with information control tools like Sandbox, IPS, and vulnerability management. All of those security tools need to be implemented and automized.

That is not the case with Rapid 7. It can be automized and we are dependant on ourselves. We can perform in having this solution customized with the confines of our text.

The initial setup was not complex and it was easy to implement.

It took a week to prepare and install the virtual machine, and to implement the solution it took one month.

Our Regulatory requires that all banks must implement all security solutions on-premises, not on the cloud because they are worried that the data will be compromised and available on different data centers around the world.

We had the help of an integrator to implement this solution. There were three engineers to help. One was for Nexpose and two for Appsider.

This solution is expensive, but it's fine for us as we have an open budget for security solutions. Protection and having the system secured is more important.

Rapid 7 is a leading solution that has been implemented in many companies.

In Nexpose you have the console and the app assistant for Rapid 7. The design can be implemented in all of the segments of the network to scan, perform the scale of the scan, perform the reporting, generate the reports, and send it to the central console.

I would suggest that customers acquire this solution.

In addition to management, we are subscribed to the security dispense team and the company emergency dispense team. We always receive the bulletins, so we are always aware of the vulnerabilities.

I appreciate this solution. All of the features that are included are enough for me.

This is an excellent solution and I would rate it a ten out of ten.

We mainly use it for vulnerability management, generating monthly reports to address and resolve vulnerabilities. The main use cases involve receiving alerts based on predefined settings by Rapid7, investigating these alerts to understand their causes, and performing fine-tuning activities.

The most valuable features of Rapid7 InsightVM for me are creating dynamic asset tags, generating reports, and deploying the agent. The agent scans assets every four hours, providing real-time data on any devices. Although there weren't any significant new features compared to our previous tool, having both SIEM and vulnerability management handled by one tool made things easier. We could gather logs from different devices and cloud sources, and perform detailed investigations without switching tools.

I haven't worked with the automation capabilities of InsightVM. For remediation prioritization, we check the vulnerability, search for solutions on open platforms, and work with different teams to apply patches after proper testing. Currently, we don’t have any AI or ASM projects assisted by InsightVM

I’d like to see Rapid7 InsightVM improve by adding a knowledge base similar to what Qualys offers. This would help us easily check and search for vulnerabilities using Rapid7 IDs associated with CVs or CVSS.

From a features perspective, everything was fine at the time, and the security features of Rapid7 InsightVM were effective.

I've been working with Rapid7 InsightVM since December.

Overall, I would recommend Rapid7 InsightVM to others. My advice would be to first understand your requirements and infrastructure before implementing the product. I would rate InsightVM as an eight.

We used InsightVM mainly for vulnerability management. I thought it was a pretty interesting application. I'm a fan of Rapid7's Metasploit, so when I saw InsightVM I was like, "Let's see what else they have." I liked it up until we experienced some issues relating to scans. If I wanted to do mitigation, I needed to wait until the next scan was available or ran so that I could get to see if any indentations were made. 

While I was in there, if I was searching for a specific vulnerability, sometimes it was hard to find the specific ones. In the dashboard, it'll tell you the results from the scans, and it will also tell you the vulnerabilities and it will rank them for risk. I would have liked to have been able to click on the vulnerability and it would take me to another area that just has the vulnerability with all the hosts. It wouldn't let you do that. You had to come back out of that window and go into another window and search for it. Well, you wouldn't get the same results as the number of hosts. I had to work a little bit harder to find exactly what I needed.

Within our organization, there were two of us using it. Both of us were IT analysts. One was an IT analyst III (which was me), and the other one was the IT analyst manager.

I would say that it improved our visibility, but it left things open.

I liked the dashboard on it. I could customize my dashboard with different widgets and different heat maps. I liked that. That was a feature I liked. If your manager had a different dashboard that they liked, and you tried to go into a meeting and they say, "Well, I think your numbers are wrong because my dashboard says this" Well, you couldn't rapidly say, "Here's the default dashboard for this for risk." Whereas, with Tenable, you could go through a dashboard just for risks, and say, "Hey, let's switch to this dashboard so we're seeing the same numbers without customization."

They just need to fix it to make it more fluid. If it shows you vulnerabilities, I want to be able to click on the vulnerability and drill down into the vulnerability. If it's rating it as a 10 and it says it's got 30 hosts in it for this vulnerability, I want to click on that vulnerability and get a separate report that says, "Here's the vulnerability specific and here's the host involved." That way I could export it and say, "Hey, this vulnerability's out there, it matches a CVE number that is critical, that Microsoft, Cisco, whatever, has put a patch out there, and here guys, here's what it is and here's the proof. Here's your host that's vulnerable. Here's a change request, fix it, send me back the proof that you fixed it, then allow me to rerun a scan specific to that, on-demand, to say 'Yes, boss, we have mitigated it.'"

I want to be able to just drill down on the reports. If it showing me there's a vulnerability and there's a said number of nodes that's vulnerable to it, I want to be able to drill down and export that list without having to come back out of it, going into my assets, trying to find the name of the vulnerability, which doesn't match what the dashboard says. To me, that was backward.

I have used this solution for one year.

It was pretty stable. We didn't have any real hiccups, but it was stable. We didn't have any real hiccups there.

As far as I know, it says it's scalable. I'm not sure if that company I used to work for had to scale it up or down.

The tech support was very helpful. Actually, I knew a couple of them so it was very helpful.

I would give their tech support a rating of 10 — I knew them from using Metasploit and some other products. It was more of a, "Hey, I got this issue, how can you help me with it?" They'd point me and say, "Hey, check this out."

I wasn't involved in the initial setup, so I can't comment on that.

Do your proof of concepts if you can. Make sure you develop your risk strategy. That's important, because it's going to give you a risk number, it's going to give you critical: highs, mediums, but you need to understand what is the risk methodology that you're going to follow. Just because it says it's critical because of how many vulnerabilities you have, doesn't mean that you need to work on it right away.

For example, there was a vulnerability that had 2,000 nodes affected. It put it as a high-risk, whereby there was another vulnerability where there were only about 10 hosts affected — it put it at medium-risk. However, the high-risk one, because it had more nodes affected, did not have a POC associated with it. A novice person looking at it would say, "I need to work on these 1,000 vulnerabilities because it's a high-risk, and ignore the medium." Well, the medium one had an active POC on it. If you didn't have a person who understood how to read the report and what it's actually telling you, then you would say, "Hey, you know what, I'm going to use these, I'm going to cut my risk down because I got 1,000 nodes with this vulnerability and I'm going to put this chain out real quick and I'm going to reduce my risk real quick because of the numbers." Well, in my opinion, you didn't reduce your risk because you have 10 nodes out there with a vulnerability that's rated medium and it has a POC on it.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of eight. I'm going to say that is because shame on Rapid7 for having such great applications, but then that little piece there that they know about hasn't been fixed. If I remember, if I go probably log back into the community, it's probably been asked a couple of times.

I don't use this solution directly because I'm not a security admin, but my use case is checking servers against it to see what our patching penetration looks like and whether there are any vulnerabilities that need to be cleared up. We are customers of Insight VM.

One of the great features is reporting where you know exactly what the solution has found, and you're also provided with a resolution to any problem. It's great. I also like the fact that it can go through and scan not just the Windows server but also all the Linux boxes. The same applies to Unix boxes which provide a full report regarding vulnerabilities that need to be rectified or packages that need to be applied. 

There are some issues with how it scans patches. Sometimes one patch will have been superseded by another but it won't see that, because one little key hasn't changed. 

I've been using this solution for several years. 

It's a scanning system, so of course there are resource issues. That said, it's a stable solution. 

Scalability is good; it has supported all of our servers from Windows to Linux, and does it rather well. 

I recommend reviewing the documentation and studying the built-in reports because they are a valuable resource. It's a great product that reports everything that's wrong with a system, providing detailed and high-level reports. 

I rate the solution nine out of 10. 

Our company uses the solution to discover, identify, and patch vulnerabilities or disable certain services. The solution provides the patch recommendations that we implement via another tool. 

Four team members manage the solution internally and for various clients who each have fifty users. 

The solution helps to identify lots of misconfigurations, flaws, or security risks. Anything insecure is exposed easily. 

The solution is automatically scheduled so it runs by itself. 

The solution should include a tighter integration with third-party threat modeling and threat intelligence tools. Rapid7 is the solution's own threat intelligence platform but third-party platforms would be a great addition. 

It would be nice to have patching capabilities built within the solution rather than using third-party products. 

I have been using the solution for three years. 

The solution is extremely stable. 

The solution is easily scalable with the purchase of additional licenses. 

Technical support is extremely good and we get support quite fast. Technical support is rated a ten out of ten. 

Positive

The setup is very straightforward so I rate it a ten out of ten. 

We implement the solution for customers. 

The solution is a bit more reasonably priced than other products. 

Most products in this category are similar with no real difference so it all comes down to price. 

It is important to have a strong patch management plan that prioritizes what and how you need to patch. 

The solution does the vast majority of work but you need a proper system so you can take output to your operations team for patching. A good workflow between teams is important. 

I rate the solution a ten out of ten. 

One of the most valuable features is it's graphical dashboard feature. It is quite easy to manage the widgets, and we can customize those according to our queries.

The other most valuable feature is that we can integrate Rapid7 InsightVM with JIRA. If a vulnerability in our services or server is found, it directly connects with JIRA and will assign a ticket. We can then share that with our development team or infrastructure team. Within a team, we can share it and assign the ticket, and we can smoothly do the mitigation process.

Also, InsightVM has an image container that can be utilized via a CI/CD pipeline. We can directly integrate with building tools, and we can have vulnerability assessment throughout the development life cycle.

Rapid7's initiative Project Sonar digs out the vulnerabilities arising all over the world and sends feedback to the systems. They then immediately update their databases and begin mitigation processes.

Within InsightVM, there is no feature to assign a ticket. If we can have more API calls, we can do that from InsightVM.

There is room for improvement when it comes to JIRA integration. If they can collaborate with the JIRA team, then it will be easier for people to use it.

If we can configure and define more features such as the critical elite level through InsightVM, it would be better.

I would prefer to have vulnerability assessment with more features, like code analysis, code coverage, etc.

I would also prefer to have a method of custom image analysis for assessment.

In the SDLC (software development lifecycle), if we could easily integrate with a particular lifecycle, then we could have more descriptive reports.

I have worked with this solution for two years now.

It is definitely stable.

The scalability is quite good. We can increase the number of assets by paying either onsite or online. Also, we have an onsite engine, and we can install it in our cloud or AWS cloud, for instance.

The technical support team has answered our questions within a couple of hours. They have provided precise answers so far to all the questions we have asked them.

The initial setup was an easy task because we have a Linux server installed.

InsightVM has a framework that's very interesting, and they have very detailed documentation. They have step-by-step directions for the installation process, and we can download them from their site. This means that anyone can easily install it and configure it.

The harder part is writing the queries. We need to have knowledge of InsightVM and how queries, assets, and conditional formats occur. Extensive knowledge can be valuable at this stage of the process.

Pricing is reasonable because we pay according to asset usage. We can define our assets and sites according to our preference.

I recommend doing a comparison of Qualys, Rapid7, and Nessus. Because the scope is different from company to company and cluster to cluster, it would be good to research each product and decide according to your needs.

If I were to rate Rapid7 InsightVM, I would rate it at seven on a scale from one to ten.

We'll use Rapid7 InsightVM for on-premises scanning and the virtual machine option for cloud-based environments.

It is a good tool for comprehensive risk management, including prioritization and remediation.

It is a great endpoint agent. It gives you reliable information about that infrastructure and offers strong accuracy for risk management. However, unlike other management tools that have improved precision testing, InsightVM requires an additional purchase for full access to some of its advanced features.

Other solutions, like Cisco, have strengths, but Rapid7 InsightVM has some solid features, such as the RapidServer Active Response, the ability to create endpoint agents, and a live dashboard. However, the main concern is the system's reliability. For instance, during a scan on an Ubuntu machine, the system mistakenly identified the OS as Windows. This kind of inaccuracy is problematic.

I have been using Rapid7 InsightVM for a year. 

The response takes some time.

Neutral

Rapid7 is a bit expensive.

Tenable has 20% lower pricing and includes built-in web application testing, which gives it an advantage over Rapid7 InsightVM.

I recommend Tennable for small and Rapid for big enterprises.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.