Security teams need to be able to quickly and accurately identify new services and potential threats. That’s why rapid discovery of new services is an important gauge for evaluating any internet scanner or intelligence source.
Measuring Rapid Discovery: Censys vs. Shodan
To assess our own rapid discovery of new services, the Censys Research Team measured how fast our scanning engine detects newly opened “common” ports on internet-facing hosts when compared to Shodan. Censys deployed over 300 honeypots across various regions in Google Cloud and measured how quickly Censys and Shodan found those hosts.
Censys Outperforms on Coverage & Time-to-Discovery
The results from this experiment reveal that Censys outperforms Shodan in two key ways:
- Coverage: Censys discovered 100% of all services within a week, outperforming Shodan, which on average only detected 57% in the same timeframe.
- Time to Discovery: Censys outpaced Shodan in discovery, uncovering new services in nearly one-sixth of the time it took Shodan on average.
Read the research to learn more about how Censys compares to Shodan!
