Update the Vulnerability Database (VDB)

The Cisco vulnerability database (VDB) is a database of known vulnerabilities to which hosts may be susceptible, as well as fingerprints for operating systems, clients, and applications. The system uses the VDB to help determine whether a particular host increases your risk of compromise.

Cisco issues periodic updates to the VDB. The time it takes to update the VDB and its associated mappings on the management center depends on the number of hosts in your network map. As a rule of thumb, divide the number of hosts by 1000 to determine the approximate number of minutes to perform the update.

The initial setup on the management center automatically downloads and installs the latest VDB from Cisco as a one-time operation. It also schedules a weekly task to download the latest available software updates, which includes the latest VDB. We recommend you review this weekly task and adjust if necessary. Optionally, schedule a new weekly task to actually update the VDB and deploy configurations. For more information, see Vulnerability Database Update Automation.

For VDB 343+, all application detector information is available through Cisco Secure Firewall Application Detectors. This site includes a searchable database of application detectors. The release notes provide information on changes for a particular VDB release.

For VDB 363+, the system installs a smaller VDB (also called VDB lite) on lower memory devices running Snort 2. This smaller VDB contains the same applications, but fewer detection patterns. Devices using the smaller VDB can miss some application identification versus devices using the full VDB.