Greenbone OS 21.04 – Even faster, more reliable and clearer

We are pleased to inform you that the latest version of our operating system Greenbone OS is now available! We have taken many of your wishes into account: the focus of the improvement was the scanning of large networks with many scan results and extensive reports. Among other things, GOS 21.04 offers new hardware, an improvement of host detection and clearer reports.


Delivering the best vulnerability management to our customers – this goal has always been at the core of our products. With the new release of our operating system Greenbone OS, we stay true to this claim and make our products more powerful: especially for large networks with many distributed branch offices, scanning with GOS 21.04 is faster and the scan results are even clearer.

More powerful and faster hardware for the Midrange Class

In large networks, several distributed medium-sized to large appliances are usually used, linked together via a master-sensor setup. For this reason, the Midrange Class hardware appliances have been strengthened by improving their hardware.

Our new hardware now uses SSD-type hard disks instead of HDD, which are 10 times faster, quieter and lighter. There is also more storage space available. The RAM has also been improved: instead of DDR3, it is now DDR4, which is much faster due to a higher clock rate (3200 MHz). Furthermore, twice to four times as much working memory is available than before. In addition, the hardware received new, faster CPU of the latest generation and also the ports of the appliances were updated: instead of 6 ports GbE-Base-TX and 2 ports 1 GbE SFP there are now 8 ports GbE-Base-TX and 2 ports 10 GbE SFP+.

Boreas Alive Scanner for faster availability of results now as standard

Scanning is also getting faster – which is especially helpful in large networks. GOS 20.08 already introduced the Boreas Alive Scanner, a host alive scanner that identifies the active hosts in a target network. With GOS 21.04, the Boreas Alive Scanner becomes standard, eliminating the need for manual activation.

The Boreas Alive Scanner is not limited in terms of the maximum number of simultaneous alive scans it can perform, making it faster than its predecessor Nmap. This significantly reduces the scanning time for large networks. Initial scan results are available faster, regardless of the percentage of reachable hosts in the network.

Clearer reports thanks to new report formats

The evaluation of scans is also clearer – thanks to new report formats. With the Vulnerability Report format as PDF and as HTML, the reports are clearly structured and easy to read. Specific information relevant to the target group can be quickly identified and understood.

See for Yourself

Scanning with GOS 21.04 is even faster, more reliable and clearer. Convince yourself of our new features and changes! New appliances with GOS 21.04 are available now. For existing appliances, the upgrade to the latest version will be available next week. Also our free trial version will be usable with GOS 21.04 then.