While browsing the Shavlik.com website I stumbled on a small but powerful hidden away gem in the pages named VMware Security Advisor.

Are you aware of all your security risks? Security Advisor provides you with the ability to perform a no-cost security scan on your machine, domain, or IP range. It instantly reports the following critical information, all ranked by severity:

  • A snapshot of your environment including the number of missing patches, missing security patches and the average number of missing patches per machine as compared to the community
  • Systems Center ranks machines by severity and identifies the machines requiring patches
  • Software Center shows the software by vendor as well as the software titles requiring patches
  • Patch Center indicates the percent of products missing patches not covered by WSUS as well the number of missing patches and number of vulnerable machines
  • Community Center identifies how the security of your IT environment compares to the community

I used the scan on my own system to determine what it does, after you click the button to scan your system/domain/ip-range it will download an ST.OpsCloud.Client. Also will it check your system which browser you are using. It identified I have Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome installed so it asked me which one to use so it could prep the browser with a plug-in or add on in My case with Firefox.

After the preparation the scan took less than 2 minutes to determine which software is on the machine (and I must admit I have a lot installed), after that you get a report printed on screen. It is also possible to get a link mailed to you with a download link in it where you can download the full report generated.

Just try it out here, I think it is a nice tool to help us all in the ongoing security, management and keeping things working day by day routine.