Greenbone - GOS 20.04 postponed, support for GOS 4.3 and 5.0 extended

The Corona pandemic affects all areas, including Greenbone. In order to guarantee the usual quality of Greenbone software, Greenbone has decided to postpone the planned release of GOS 20.4. The new planned date is 31.08.2020. At the same time the release will be renamed to GOS 20.8.

This was also done to ease the burden on customers. Due to the current situation, access to data centres is not always easy to achieve and home offices and short-time work are already placing an increased burden on IT staff in companies.

Therefore, it was also decided that GOS 4.3 and 5.0 will not be removed from support on 31 July 2020. GOS 4.3 and GOS 5.0 will enter the end-of-life phase on 1 August 2020, but will receive full support and security updates until 31 December 2020.

GOS 6.0 will receive full support and security updates until 31.08.2020.

Once GOS 20.8 is available, an update can of course be made. Please note that this must be done gradually. If you are still using GOS 4.3, you would first have to update to GOS 5.0, then to GOS 6.0. Only with this version is an update to GOS 20.8 possible.

Greenbone confirms that GOS 5.0 is still the recommended version and asks you to either update to GOS 5.0 or to go back from GOS 6.0 to 5.0.

Who is Greenbone and what do they do?

Greenbone Networks was founded in 2008 by leading experts in network security and Free Software. The privately held company is based in Osnabrück, Germany.

Greenbone offers an open source-based solution for vulnerability analysis and management: the Greenbone Security Manager (GSM). It identifies security vulnerabilities in corporate IT, assesses their risk potential and recommends measures for remediation. The goal is to prevent attacks through targeted precautionary measures. This makes the GSM the perfect complement to reactive security tools such as firewalls & co.

Transparency and quality are important to Greenbone. Customers receive a completely verifiable product made in Germany instead of a "black box". This is well received even at the highest level: Based on a federal licence agreement with the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), Greenbone also supports German authorities in the fight against cyber attacks.

What is GOS (Greenbone OS)?

Greenbone OS (GOS) is the powerful basis of the Greenbone Security Manager. It includes the basic operating system, an administration layer and the scanning applications. The hardware-specific functions vary depending on the GSM variant.

What is the Greenbone Security Manager?

The Greenbone Security Manager is a vulnerability management solution. Vulnerabilities refer to unpatched security holes in IT. This can be a non-updated Adobe Reader or Flash version or the very frequently used JAVA. All of the tools mentioned above have open, known vulnerabilities that can - and urgently should - be patched. The problem with open vulnerabilities is that you first have to know where these programmes are located and, above all, in which version they are installed. Very few companies have clean documentation here. So with a vulnerability management solution, you are able to scan your systems and check them against known vulnerabilities. Patching these systems is then possible without any problems on the basis of this list. Greenbone's own scan engine is used here, which carries out up to 64,000 vulnerability scans and also adheres to the well-known vulnerability standards CVE, CPE and CVSS.

Why choose Greebone?

Greenbone is one of the few manufacturers that builds on open-source solutions and is actively involved in the open-source community. The manufacturer supports the open source project OpenVAS, which is also used in the Greenbone solutions.

If you are interested in reducing the attack surface in your company or would like to carry out a test installation, you are welcome to contact us via telephone, e-mail or our contact form. We will be happy to advise you!