We use The NodeZero Platform for its automated internal penetration testing and automated external penetration testing. We use both of them and drop tripwires in the same thing, and we also run rapid response. We don't have the highest level subscription, but we have access to a lot of it. I use it for segmentation testing. I use it to help validate vulnerabilities through vulnerability management because we use Rapid7 and CrowdStrike. I now have a three-way assessment of our vulnerabilities and which vulnerabilities actually matter. I assess the attack chain with it. We use a lot of the platform and leverage its true capabilities within our subscription.

It prevented an attack indirectly. We experienced a threat that could have severely crippled us, but we were able to shut it down before it escalated. This was possible because we had been conducting internal vulnerability testing and addressed some critical vulnerabilities using their tool. If we hadn’t done that, those vulnerabilities could have been exploited to incapacitate us. So, in real time, it protected us from a potentially crippling attack.

NodeZero's Endpoint Security Effectiveness feature significantly enhances our understanding of potential security threats. I previously used CrowdStrike and Rapid7 to identify vulnerabilities. Both highlight which vulnerabilities are exploitable using tools like Metasploit or are actively being leveraged by malicious actors. However, these tools don’t provide a complete understanding of the attack chain, which is where NodeZero excels. I encountered challenges with patch management, as we struggled to test and implement patches due to time constraints. This led to our patch management process being ineffective. After conducting an initial internal penetration test with The NodeZero Platform, we were able to clearly see the attack paths and identify critical vulnerabilities. Instead of facing a daunting list of 300 critical vulnerabilities, our team could now focus on just 30 key vulnerabilities that would effectively mitigate most of the attack vectors. As a result, we reduced our potential for significant attacks to a minimal level, thanks to NodeZero’s ability to highlight the critical pathways and prioritize the vulnerabilities that truly matter.

The NodeZero Platform is awesome. It's intuitive, easy on the eyes, and the platform and presentation are clean and crisp. The reports generated from internal or external penetration tests require little to no adjustment when I'm presenting to the C-suite. They need information that's quickly consumable so they can move on to the next task, and many other platforms just don't provide that. The reports from The NodeZero Platform deliver a clean export that can be easily copied and pasted onto a presentation. I can summarize everything in three PowerPoint slides, highlighting our current status, our goals, and what has been resolved, as well as what is still outstanding. This streamlined export is incredibly beneficial for the C-suite.

Moreover, the detailed reports not only list the vulnerabilities that matter, but they also include direct links to patches. This feature saves our team time, as we don't have to search for fixes for each vulnerability. We're a small team, servicing around 400 employees with just 12 IT personnel. So, having all vulnerabilities laid out with links to their respective fixes is immensely convenient.

This platform is truly exceptional for anyone involved in these types of scans, and I believe everyone should be conducting them regularly. With the ease of use in deploying both internal and external scan engines, even someone with minimal computer knowledge can operate it. This makes it accessible to all organizations, whether they are municipalities, government entities, or small local businesses. Being able to sign up with the company and start scanning, both internally and externally, within an hour is remarkable. You can even automate your scans on a monthly basis, along with scheduling hands-on keyboard penetration testing at least once a year. Human testers bring creativity that currently exceeds that of AI, so having that annual hands-on review is important. Many organizations neglect this practice, but the usability of this platform allows anyone to manage it. For example, my wife works as the mayor of our city, and our police chief is not very computer-savvy—he can barely open a Word document. As a test case, I plan to have him set it up to demonstrate its simplicity, as the city is considering adopting this platform. I want to see if he can manage the setup and launch, which would confirm that basic users with little computer experience can successfully execute it. Even my wife kicked off a scan and felt like a hacker, despite her limited technical skills. As someone who enjoys penetration testing and has a good amount of computer knowledge, I find using this platform not only efficient but also enjoyable.

Adding an OSINT tool would greatly improve their platform. One of the things that many vendors are pushing is identity protection, which scans the deep web for compromised credentials and identifies fake profiles of your company's leadership. Essentially, it provides an open-source intelligence view of what is happening out there and what has been compromised that attackers could potentially exploit. This service reveals which credentials and email addresses are available on the deep web, as well as which domains have been set up using typo-squatting techniques. It summarizes all this information and helps raise awareness among users. For example, if it detects that someone's credentials are exposed, it can prompt them to change their email address and passwords. If it identifies typo-squatting on certain domains, you can pass this information on to the vendors to have those domains taken down.

I have been using The NodeZero Platform for approximately two years.

I have not experienced any issues with The NodeZero Platform on their end. Occasionally the runner gets delayed, but that's due to our misconfigurations or internal issues, not their machines.

Scalability with The NodeZero Platform is straightforward. I deployed it across multiple systems - Graperoberts, Selmid, Sky Geek, and our DLC. It scales seamlessly. We currently scan approximately 1,500-2,000 assets and haven't encountered any scaling or throughput issues.

The technical support for The NodeZero Platform is exceptional. On the federal side, response times are incredibly fast - typically within five to ten minutes, with a maximum wait time of 30 minutes. Their responsiveness is remarkable.

When we were attacked, our endpoint detection and response (EDR) system was slower to respond than they were. I contacted our EDR team immediately, informing them that we were under attack and that files were being compromised. I asked for guidance on what they were seeing on the back end.

Next, I reached out to the Horizon3 team, even though I acknowledged that this wasn’t their typical area of expertise. I explained the situation and asked for their thoughts on what the next phase of the attack might be, so we could start shutting things down. Remarkably, they replied within five to ten minutes, which was an hour faster than CrowdStrike responded. Even though it wasn't their specialty, they provided valuable advice on what we should do and how to execute our response. They are truly a solid team—ethical and highly competent.

We have used alternatives to The NodeZero Platform that we found through Coalition Control, our cyber insurance company. While the alternative conveyed similar information, it functioned more as a standard vulnerability scanner. What sets The NodeZero Platform apart is the presentation of findings, making it clear and easy to understand the attack chain. The alternative tool was essentially another vulnerability scanner that could check boxes for internal and external penetration testing but didn't provide the attack chain capabilities that The NodeZero Platform does.

It's super easy. The setup takes about 30 minutes. It’s really quite simple. You log in, enter a couple of IP addresses, and hit “scan” for your external assets. I'd estimate that the external scan setup took around thirty minutes. The internal scan setup took a bit longer, probably about an hour before I could actually start scanning. I had to reach out to one of my developers, Jason, to assist because I couldn’t build it myself; I don’t have the necessary admin credentials as the InfoSec Manager. I asked Jason to create a virtual machine (VM) and install the tool for me, and after that, I was able to run it.

To summarize, it took about an hour from the time I requested help from Jason until I ran my first internal penetration test. So, we’re looking at 30 minutes for the external setup and an hour for the internal setup. However, keep in mind that we’re not a new operation—we have skilled personnel. If you're a small business that has never set up a VM before, it might take you two to three hours to follow the instructions. Unless you have a Horizon3 team member to guide you, it generally takes about an hour. Overall, it's very simple.

It couldn't be better unless it fixed the vulnerabilities automatically. I've already communicated this to them, stating, "You need to fix them for me." They have seen the issues and have the link, so I just want them to apply the patch.

If I were to rate this solution on a scale from one to ten, it would definitely be a ten.

The primary use case that we have for The NodeZero Platform is for scanning the environment and identifying vulnerabilities. The tool prioritizes vulnerabilities, focusing on the most critical ones.

It has evolved significantly over time. What sets this tool apart from others is its ability to prioritize vulnerabilities effectively. Many vulnerability management (VM) tools today provide users with extensive lists of vulnerabilities—often numbering in the thousands, with categories like four thousand critical and three thousand high. Upon deeper examination, it's common to find that more than half of those vulnerabilities aren't even exploitable. This results in overwhelming amounts of data without a clear focus on what needs immediate attention to improve security. In contrast, this tool excels at prioritizing vulnerabilities based on their relevance to attack scenarios. It analyzes specific attack chains to determine how critical each vulnerability is and assesses how frequently those vulnerabilities appear across various attack chains. By doing this, this tool can elevate the priority of certain vulnerabilities, allowing organizations to concentrate their remediation efforts on the most critical issues. A prime example of this effectiveness comes from an acquisition we conducted. The organization believed it had a robust security environment. However, after running The NodeZero Platform over a weekend, we discovered vulnerabilities that allowed for compromise in approximately 35 different ways. With other tools, addressing these vulnerabilities could have taken six to twelve months due to poor prioritization. In our case, we were able to eliminate the risk of domain compromise within one month and address all single-host vulnerabilities by the second month, all done with a small team, thanks to our precise focus on what truly mattered.

The solution’s feature that allows security teams to fix and re-test vulnerabilities instantly is fantastic. With traditional penetration tests conducted by a human, the process is very expensive. You typically get two weeks of testing, then you make your fixes, and sometimes you can get them to retest. However, often you have to pay extra, and sometimes you just don't have enough time. This results in going another year hoping or thinking that vulnerabilities are fixed, but they might not be. With Horizon3, you can immediately retest vulnerabilities, and it will clearly indicate whether or not they are still present. Probably 20 times in the last year or two, we were told something was fixed when it actually wasn’t. Sometimes it’s due to a patch not being applied correctly, or perhaps they missed adding a registry key. There could be various root causes. The ability to dig in with our team and confirm whether a vulnerability is resolved is crucial. They can go back and fix it, and sometimes that takes multiple attempts. So this functionality is really valuable.

The platform's real attack capabilities have massively helped in identifying vulnerabilities in our on-prem systems. The best litmus test I can give is that during our previous penetration tests, attackers would easily gain domain admin access. However, with Horizon3, we can prioritize vulnerabilities and address them effectively. We recently conducted our first penetration test where the testers were completely unable to gain domain admin access, which is impressive given that this was done by a well-known player in penetration testing.

In terms of NodeZero's Endpoint Security Effectiveness feature's impact on our understanding of potential security threats, looking at it from the endpoint perspective really helps us identify what needs to be done to address vulnerabilities. Once we know what those are, we can go in and fix them. It’s pretty cool.

Prioritization is really key; it's a massive differentiator. The prioritization aspect is crucial. The ability to capture or crack credentials and then use that to move laterally and identify additional vulnerabilities is significant. Their password-cracking capability is a distinct function that is very helpful.

Additionally, when a new vulnerability, such as a zero-day exploit, is identified, they review your previous scans to determine if you might be vulnerable to it, and they proactively notify you. That's a huge benefit.

Also, the fact that they provide fixes alongside all their identified vulnerabilities means you don’t have to search for fixes yourself. They give you specific actions to take, which is incredibly helpful and saves a lot of time.

One significant area to focus on is external vulnerabilities, particularly in the web application space. This often requires a greater level of human ingenuity, as it typically involves navigating a webpage, creating an account, and testing for various vulnerabilities, such as SQL injection. Adding this capability would be a valuable enhancement.

I have been using The NodeZero Platform for approximately four to five years.

The only issue we’ve encountered is that sometimes the scans take a long time to complete. This happens when a credential is identified late in the scan, leading the system to attempt that credential on all the other hosts. As a result, the scans can run longer than expected and may even cause some memory issues. Fortunately, this is a relatively easy fix; you just need to increase the amount of memory on the server. Overall, it’s a minor issue.

The NodeZero Platform has unbelievable scalability. The limiting factor is just where you have the hardware infrastructure to be able to add additional VMs. Anywhere you can put a VM, you can run another concurrent scan.

I might sound like a fanboy, but I truly have about three and a half vendors that I really like. I'm generally tough on most of my other vendors, but these particular ones stand out because they are that good. From a tech support perspective, I would say they have some of the best support compared to any of the companies I work with. Microsoft, for example, is very hit or miss. Sometimes you get an excellent support representative, but I find that about 80% of the time, the person assisting you has no idea what they're doing. As for other decent options, CrowdStrike typically provides good support, but it seems like they focus more on managing tickets from an ITIL perspective, prioritizing the speed of ticket resolution over thoroughness. Zscaler is similar in that respect; They are better than Microsoft, but the quality of support can still be somewhat inconsistent.

Overall, when it comes to The NodeZero Platform's tech support, you can reach them via a chat message on their website, and they respond almost immediately. You're quickly connected with a very knowledgeable engineer, and you receive prompt responses. They are really good.

We have used Nessus, Qualys, and Tenable as alternatives to The NodeZero Platform. We were paying for Tenable. We were paying for Qualys. We basically stopped and moved to Horizon3.

If you were looking for a super wide net of everything that you could possibly try and identify, I think the other ones might be more holistic, but their prioritization is lacking, leaving you less secure because they do not help you prioritize.

It was super easy. From initially getting it set up to running it, it took about 24 hours. The biggest time requirement is actually getting a virtual machine (VM) stood up. If you can get a Linux VM set up, that’s the hardest part of the whole process. After that, it’s really easy.

From a maintenance perspective, in terms of keeping the system healthy and functional, there isn’t much that we need to do; it pretty much runs itself. However, where we do put in work is in reviewing the outputs and determining our priorities. We then collaborate with the rest of the team, particularly on the server side, to address vulnerabilities and other issues that arise. So, while there is work involved, it’s not about maintaining the Horizon3 product itself, but rather managing the findings that we need to fix.

The benefits of The NodeZero Platform are immediate. Just having access to a list of prioritized vulnerabilities and understanding how they were exploited in various attack chains was eye-opening. You might think you have a highly secure environment, but in reality, it can be compromised easily. This insight highlighted everything that needed improvement. Honestly, it's one of the most transformational technologies we've implemented in our company.

They offer really fantastic pricing. We've been with them for a long time, so I believe we might have a special deal. However, from conversations with other peers, it seems their pricing is very competitive as well.

I would rate The NodeZero Platform a 10 out of 10.