Host Scanning

This document applies only to the Vulnerability Management engine, released April 20, 2022. Make sure you are using the correct documentation: Which Scanning Engine to Use. You also need to enable it in Sysdig Labs.

A “host” is any runtime entity where you could execute the Sysdig agent, including virtual machines, Kubernetes nodes, bare metal, and cloud-managed hosts such as EC2.

Note: Having the agent installed on the hosts is not required, but is recommended. The autocomplete feature on filters and searches depends on the Sysdig agent.

Enable Host Scanning

Option 1: Agent-Based

You can install the agent-based host scanner in several ways:

See also: the Installation Requirements.

Each of these methods enables the scanning of hosts.

Scanning Non-Kubernetes Containers

You can also extend the “host scanner” to scan for non-Kubernetes containers:

  • On a host as a container
  • As an RPM package
  • As a binary application

These configurations are each described on the Non-Kubernetes Container Scanning page.

Option 2: Agentless (Technical Preview)

For AWS cloud accounts, you can deploy agentless vulnerability management host scanning using the Cloud Account Onboarding Wizard.

Note: if you want to limit the VPCs or hosts that are scanned on the connected AWS account, apply AWS tags to those entities before deploying, as described in the Prerequisites.

See Connect Cloud Account | AWS | Agentless for both Prereqs and deployment information.

Current Feature Limitations

  • No Risk Spotlight/In Use integration

How Long until Host Scan Results Appear in the UI?

Agent-Based

  • If the default parameter nodeAnalyzer.nodeAnalyzer.hostScanner.scanOnStart=true is set, then a scan will start just after the pod is ready. You can expect the results in a few minutes, ~15 minutes max.
  • If this parameter is not set, results will be shown ~11 hours from installation.
  • In all cases, scans are refreshed every 12 hours.
  • Helm chart and Docker container installations behave the same.

Agentless

  • It could take up to 15 minutes before scan results appear in Runtime.
  • Scans are refreshed every 24 hours.

Usage

Once you have deployed the host scanner in your environment, the Runtime UI will integrate the findings alongside the runtime workload results, based on an out-of-the-box Vulnerability policy.

Filter for Hosts

You can filter to find results of host scanning using the quick links in the banner at the top of the page, and/or the filter bar.

Agent-Based Result Filters

  • Kubernetes cluster name
  • Cloud account id
  • Cloud account region
  • Host Name
  • Agent tags

Agentless Result Filters

  • Cloud account id
  • Cloud account region
  • Host Name
  • Cloud instance ID (text search)

See also, Vulnerability Policies|Runtime.

Download Reports

You can schedule and download reports for scanning done on hosts as well as containers.

See Vulnerabilities|Reporting.