AWS CloudTrail vs. Tenable Nessus

It is necessary to enable [AWS] Cloudtrail when using AWS in a production environment, otherwise you will not have any idea what is happening within your accounts. Third party monitoring applications will all require [AWS] CloudTrail to be enabled as well. I would not recommend it solely as a monitoring tool, to get the most out of it you must send the logs elsewhere. Either to Cloudwatch logs or a third party product.

Incentivized

Nessus is perfectly suitable for performing comprehensive vulnerability assessment scans being a vulnerability scanner. It is less appropriate for performing penetration testing since it is not a penetration testing tool, it does not have the ability and modules to exploit the vulnerabilities of the system.

Incentivized

• API Log
• User activity tracking
• Real-time alerts

Incentivized

• With Nessus we can find the missing critical patches for a server or workstations.
• Nessus points out any vulnerable or outdated software Technologies used in the system, thus eliminating any chances for security flaws being turned up.
• Nessus typically points any configuration level issues in accordance with the OWASP guidelines. Even the configuration of SSL related which are most of the time handled by some vendors or 3rd parties.
• Nessus not only lists out these Vulnerabilities but describes clearly the vulnerabilities in details with its thousands of plugins updated regularly, the tool also recommends solution with practical details of easy implementation.

Incentivized

• [In my experience] Cost can easily get out of control with multiple trails on full logging
• Logs can be difficult to decipher

Incentivized

• Could use an upgrade within reports.
• Scans can take a long time to complete. Have to break them down in small sections.

Incentivized

Nessus is best and easy to use application for Vulnerabilities finding and reporting, it has multiple platforms and wide scope covering almost all devices for security improvement so far, thus we are very likely to continue its services.

Incentivized

It's very much a plug and play application that the user can go into with limited knowledge and set-up scans in minutes.

Incentivized

I haven't needed to contact support yet. But issues are easily solved with a quick internet search which means support and by extension, the larger community are involved and knowledgeable.

Incentivized

I think in the end, CloudTrail has more features and you can dive deeper inside the logs so it depends on your usage and what you expect in the end to make the right choice, I would say that both tools are really useful and bring a lot of benefits to I.T. companies.

Incentivized

Sometimes when we identify a vulnerability with Nessus that has an exploit, we made a proof of concept with Metasploit in order to show to the IT managers the importance of the software/hardware hardening.

Incentivized

• Allows us to investigate any strange api actions
• Increases security
• Audit trail of changes made in AWS

Incentivized

• Nessus certainly has a positive impact while me while performing my job, either as security research, or performing vulnerability assessments for clients. It gives a lot of information about the system/application after performing scans. The number of false positives is also less compared to other vulnerability scanners.
• The professional edition is very useful as policy templates available in this edition are very handy and useful even to perform compliance scan like PCI DSS scan.
• Also, the ability to export the scan results into reports in formats like HTML, PDF is very useful which could be for performing system/application reviews.

Incentivized