Tools & Technology

Automox vs NinjaOne for Vulnerability Management

With sophisticated vulnerability management features that lower security risks, boost operational effectiveness, and guarantee regulatory compliance, Automox and NinjaOne are two well-known vulnerability management tools in the cybersecurity industry. In this article, we will discuss these tools along with their features, pros and cons, ideal users, and other alternatives you might put into consideration.

Automox

Automox is a cloud-native patch management and endpoint protection platform developed by Automox Inc. that focuses on automated patching and remediation, eliminating the need to manage VPNs or servers to maintain the security and configurations of Windows, macOS, and Linux endpoints. Improved operational efficiency and proactive security management are made possible by Automox through real-time visibility and compliance reporting.

Automox Features

Automated Vulnerability Remediation (AVR):

  • Full-cycle vulnerability detection and remediation on an automated, predictable cadence is made possible by this fundamental feature, which automates the entire vulnerability management process.
  • It allows one to directly review, approve, and deploy patches within Automox by having it process vulnerability data from other scanners, such as Rapid7 InsightVM, and classify it according to severity and solution. The vulnerability data is then presented in a prioritized list.
  • Streamline the collaboration between security and IT teams by using a unified, scalable workflow.

Vulnerability Sync:

  • Automox provides a feature called Vulnerability Sync if you're using vulnerability scanners other than Rapid7 InsightVM which allows you to upload vulnerability data in CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) format from scanners like Tenable, Qualys, and CrowdStrike.
  • Within its platform, it expeditiously transforms this data into remediation tasks that can be implemented.

Patch Automation:

  • Automox provides automatic vulnerability patch deployment for both critical and non-critical vulnerabilities.
  • It allows you to define automatic patching policies based on severity, specific vulnerabilities, or other criteria.

Remediation and Cyber Resiliency

  • Prioritization and Workload Management:
    • Automox ranks vulnerabilities according to severity, exploitability, and systems impacted.
    • This enables you to effectively manage your workload by concentrating on the most important vulnerabilities first.
  • Reporting and Compliance:
    • Automox generates detailed reports on your vulnerability posture, including the number of vulnerabilities detected, their status (patched or unpatched), and remediation history. This contributes to compliance with security regulations.
    • Quick risk identification, compliance roadblock detection, and patch troubleshooting are made possible by Automox's reporting capabilities, which provide instantaneous, actionable reports.

Automated Software Deployment

  • With zero-touch software deployment for Windows, macOS, and Linux devices, Automox makes sure your staff and devices have the software they require automatically.
  • It enables the automatic installation and distribution of software, including operating system and third-party application updates, across all managed endpoints.

Pricing

Automox charges $1 per month/endpoint with annual commitment.

Pros

  • Easy Deployment: Automox's cloud-native architecture eliminates on-premise infrastructure, simplifying deployment logistics. This feature is especially useful for businesses seeking agile solutions that minimize downtime and disruption to operations.
  • Cost-Effectiveness: Because of Automox's comparatively low price, smaller businesses or those wishing to assess the product's capabilities before committing can use it. Without requiring a large financial outlay, it provides a workable solution.
  • User-Friendly Interface and Support: Automox's customer support team is frequently praised for their competence and responsiveness in addressing technical inquiries and maximizing platform use. Its console is often praised by customers for its exceptionally user-friendly interface. Users can easily navigate the platform's simple patching policy and scanning schedule configuration options.
  • Cross-Platform Integration and Support: Automox provides comprehensive support for a wide range of third-party apps and operating systems, including Windows, macOS, and Linux. Thus, seamless interfaces optimize the value of current IT infrastructure investments while streamlining workflows and improving operational synergy.  
  • Automated Patching Capabilities: Users are well aware of Automox's ability to automate the patch management process by helping them to automatically scan endpoints, find missing patches, and apply updates under preset policies which is an asset to maintain system security and compliance without requiring human involvement, this automation is essential.

Cons

  • Security and Compliance: Due to the high-level permissions that the Automox agent needs, customers have observed an increase in security risks. The Automox agent requires permission to perform tasks such as software installation and registry modifications, which can pose security risks if not handled properly.
  • Automox Remote Control Integration Challenges: Users appreciate the ability to remotely manage endpoints; however, setting up the Automox remote control module may take some time and require complex configuration to work well with the existing IT architecture. Issues might arise when configuring the module with other endpoint management tools.
  • Restricted Customization and Detail: Occasionally, some users have voiced their dissatisfaction with Automox's reporting features, highlighting the product's limited customization and detail. The ability of IT teams to carry out thorough data analysis may be hampered by their inability to create accurate, configurable reports that are suited to particular business requirements. This constraint may restrict insights into patch deployment trends, vulnerability assessments, and compliance status across multiple endpoints and software versions.
  • Automox Worklets Complexities: Developing and implementing custom Worklets adds a great deal of flexibility and power to endpoint management, but it also carries some potential drawbacks. These include increased complexity, security risks, maintenance costs, potential disruptions, and standardization issues.
  • Limitations in Automox Scheduling and Uninstall Control: This tool's scheduling and uninstall control limitations are another major drawback. Unexpected reboots from a naive scheduling system can interfere with user activity, and program management issues can arise from a lack of uninstall protection, which fails to take user activity and essential ongoing operations into account when executing scheduled actions.

NinjaOne

NinjaOne possesses vulnerability management features built in. Within their suite, no other product is needed. NinjaOne Endpoint Management is one of the key components of their Endpoint Management solution that is specifically designed for managing vulnerabilities. Ninja One manages more endpoints per technician with the world’s most intuitive RMM (Remote Monitoring and Management) Software.

NinjaOne Endpoint Management Features

NinjaOne Endpoint Management provides proactive oversight of devices, including alert prompting, analysis, prioritization, and remediation.

Vulnerability Identification and Assessment:

  • Real-time Monitoring: NinjaOne continuously monitors your network endpoints (desktops, laptops, servers) to identify vulnerabilities in their configurations and applications.
  • Patch Management Integration: Integrates with various third-party patching tools, providing a wider range of vulnerability coverage.
  • Custom Scripting: Allows creation and execution of custom scripts to identify specific vulnerabilities beyond those covered by pre-built tools.

Prioritization and Remediation:

  • Automated Prioritization: Policies can be configured to rank vulnerabilities according to their potential impact, exploitability, and pre-established severity levels. This allows IT teams to prioritize the most critical issues first.
  • Policy-Driven Remediation: Define policies that automatically initiate actions (such as patch deployment) when specific vulnerabilities are identified.
  • Scripting for Remediation: Scripting provides more flexibility by automating specific remediation tasks beyond patching.

Alerting and Reporting:

  • Real-time Alerts: The system instantly notifies your IT team via email or other channels whenever a new vulnerability is detected on a device, operating system, or application within your network.
  • Detailed Reports: NinjaOne generates reports that provide insights into identified vulnerabilities, including their severity, location, and remediation status. This helps track progress and identify any lingering vulnerabilities.

Mitigation Strategies:

Policies can be configured to launch specific mitigation measures in response to the identification of vulnerabilities. Among these could be:

  • Configuration Hardening: Autonomously modifying system configurations to make them less vulnerable to exploits, such as disabling unused services or tightening access controls.
  • Network Segmentation: Isolating compromised or vulnerable devices to prevent them from spreading malware or interfering with the rest of your network (if supported by your network infrastructure).
  • Application Blocking: Precluding or blocking vulnerable applications until a patch is available.
  • Custom Scripting: NinjaOne's scripting capabilities allow you to create custom mitigation procedures beyond pre-defined options. This offers flexibility to address specific vulnerabilities or implement mitigation strategies tailored to your environment.

Pros of NinjaOne Endpoint Management

  • Time and Resource Savings: Automation features enable IT teams to focus on more strategic tasks, which are highly valued because they save a significant amount of time and resources.
  • Customizable Features: The ability to disable or conceal features that are not required makes phased rollouts and implementations more simplified and tailored to specific needs.
  • Accurate Documentation: Customers find the documentation to be precise, easy to follow, and accurate, which aids in troubleshooting and maximizing the platform's functionality.
  • Simple Patch Management: Configuring and monitoring patch management is simple and efficient, ensuring that system are updated with minimal effort.
  • Easy to Set Up: Users value how simple and hassle-free the initial setup process is, allowing them to get started quickly even without extensive technical knowledge.
  • Quick Command Execution: Users have reported that commands run extremely quickly, increasing productivity and efficiency overall.
  • User-Friendly Interface: The interface is intuitive and easy to navigate, making it accessible for users of all skill levels.

Cons of NinjaOne Endpoint Management

  • Limited Endpoint Integration: Customers have expressed frustration with the platform's limited ability to integrate with specific endpoints, which can make comprehensive management difficult.
  • No Built-in Ticketing System: Many customers find the lack of an integrated ticketing system inconvenient for managing support requests, requiring the use of external tools
  • Network Device Monitoring Limitations: The tool's ability to monitor network devices is limited, which may be a significant disadvantage for users who need extensive network visibility.
  • Inconsistent Customer Service: Some users have reported inconsistencies in customer service responses, with varying timeliness and helpfulness.
  • Unresolved Issues and Inadequate Support: There have been reports of unresolved issues and insufficient support, which has frustrated users and lowered their trust in the tool's dependability.
  • No Email Output Feature: The absence of a feature to directly send action or script outputs to an email is a drawback for users who require instant notifications or logs.

NinjaOne Endpoint Management Pricing

Ninjaone Endpoint Management pricing ranges from $2-4 per endpoint:

$3.50/endpoint for less than 50 endpoints

About $2.80 for 250 endpoints

About $1.25 for 1000+ endpoints

Conclusion

Alternative to Automox and NinjaOne

vRx is a comprehensive vulnerability management tool. Alternative to depending exclusively on conventional patching, it emphasizes proactive vulnerability evaluation and remedial actions. vRx combines risk assessment, vulnerability identification, and prioritization. By ranking threats based on potential consequences, it assesses additional risk factors and generates trustworthy risk scores.

Why vRx?

  • By combining assessment, prioritization, and remediation technologies into a single platform, vRx offers comprehensive vulnerability management. This enables users to quickly execute any necessary mitigations or fixes, efficiently identify vulnerabilities, and rank them according to severity or impact.
  • vRx evaluates not just vulnerabilities but also additional risk factors. Subsequently, it provides an unambiguous risk score, which helps security and IT teams allocate resources more effectively.
  • vRx uses proactive security techniques like patchless protection and vulnerability prediction to neutralize threats before they are discovered.
  • It enables businesses to prioritize operating system and application updates as needed, facilitating both automated and manual cleansing.
  • Advanced risk-scoring features merge contextual data with external sources to deliver precise CVSS calculations for each threat, including applications.
  • vRx's Patchless Protection approach swiftly secures high-risk applications without requiring immediate patches, providing ongoing protection while minimizing exposure, resulting in strong security.
  • Executive and comprehensive technical reports, as well as data exporting to other sources like SIEM, Syslog, and ticketing systems, are possible with vRx's extensive reporting features
  • It provides a thorough vulnerability management system that allows for risk detection and mitigation from a single dashboard improving whole security by using data analysis to rank high-risk vulnerabilities.
  • Organizations can enhance their cost efficiency and resource allocation by automating vulnerability management activities.
  • vRx helps organizations maintain regulatory compliance by effectively managing vulnerabilities and providing audit-ready documentation.
  • The platform's continuous monitoring function allows for real-time vulnerability evaluations, reducing the need for scheduled scans in preparation.
  • vRx enhances cybersecurity and generates a high return on investment (ROI) by quickly identifying and fixing vulnerabilities and allocating resources as efficiently as possible.
  • Vicarius also has a community-driven platform called vsociety that focuses on sharing knowledge, tools, and best practices related to cybersecurity and vulnerability management

Reference

https://www.g2.com/products/automox/reviews

https://www.trustradius.com/products/automox/review

https://www.automox.com/platform/vulnerability-remediation

https://www.getapp.com/it-management-software/a/automox/reviews/

https://www.capterra.com

https://www.gartner.com/reviews/

https://www.capterra.com/p/148872/Automox/#features

https://atmx.io/TRpricing

https://www.G2.Com/Products/Me-Vulnerability-Manager-plus-Enterprise-100-Computers-and-Single-User/Reviews

https://www.reddit.com/r/msp/comments/128uuhz/ninja_pricing/

https://www.techradar.com/pro/ninjaone-review

https://www.capterra.com/p/184229/NinjaOne/reviews/

https://www.joinsecret.com/ninjaone/reviews

https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1242hu5/anyone_use_ninjaone_feedback/

https://www.capterra.com/p/184229/NinjaOne/reviews/

https://www.ninjaone.com/vulnerability-management/

https://www.vicarius.io/

Rhoda Smart

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