This guide walks you through creating a Tenable Security Center (SC) integration.
Version note: API key authentication requires Tenable Security Center 5.13.x or later. The exact navigation paths below reflect the 6.x UI — earlier versions may present these settings in a different location, but the concepts are the same.
An Administrator must enable API key authentication at the system level before any user can generate API keys.
- Log in to Tenable Security Center as an Administrator.
- In the left navigation, go to System → Configuration.
- Click the Security tile.
- In the Authentication Settings section, enable the Allow API Keys toggle.
- Click Submit.
This only needs to be done once. If API keys are already enabled in your environment, skip to the next section.
We recommend using a dedicated service account rather than a personal user account for production integrations.
- Log in as an Administrator or Security Manager.
- Navigate to Users → Users.
- Create a new organizational user with the Vulnerability Analyst role at minimum.
- In Tenable’s User Roles documentation, Vulnerability Analyst may view security data, share objects, view logs, and use tickets — typically enough for this integration’s read-only use of vulnerability and asset data through the analysis API. If your org has customized those role permissions, you may need to adjust them or choose a different role.
- Security Analyst is more capable than Vulnerability Analyst (Tenable: all organization-level actions except managing groups and users, including tasks like freeze windows and plugin updates). Use it only if Vulnerability Analyst hits permission errors or your policy requires that tier for integration accounts.
- Assign the user to the appropriate repository so it has access to the vulnerability data you want to sync.
- Navigate to Users → Users.
- Right-click the row for the service account you created (or select its checkbox).
- From the actions menu, click API Keys → Generate API Key.
- Confirm by clicking Generate.
- Copy both the Access Key and Secret Key and store them securely.
Important: The secret key is only shown once. If you lose it, you must generate new keys, which will invalidate the previous ones.
Create your integration by supplying all configuration values.
Base URL:
The URL of your Tenable Security Center instance (e.g. https://tenablesc.example.com)
API Keys (Secret):accesskey=<access-key>; secretkey=<secret-key>;
Copy the keys from the step above. Note the format: lowercase field names, = separators, and semicolons after each value.