Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management vs. Tenable Vulnerability Management

Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management is particularly well-suited for discovering, inventorying, and continuously monitoring the external attack surface, especially in environments with heavy Microsoft adoption. It is less suitable as a standalone solution for internal scanning, real-time attack detection, automated remediation, or advanced application testing. Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management es especialmente adecuado para descubrir, inventariar y monitorear continuamente la superficie de ataque externa, sobre todo en entornos con fuerte adopción de Microsoft. Es menos adecuado como solución única para escaneo interno, detección de ataques en tiempo real, remediación automática o pruebas avanzadas de aplicaciones. Parts of this review were originally written in Spanish and have been translated into English using a third-party translation tool. While we strive for accuracy, some nuances or meanings may not be perfectly captured.

Incentivized

Tenable.io is a cost effective Internal and External scanner. The Internal scanner came with a .ova, so it was very simple and quick to deploy it into our ESXi environment. It has a cloud-based dashboard for management and the internal scanner is configured to auto-update from Tenable.io. The license came with 4 External PCI scans (with remediation) a year.

Incentivized

• Lack of visibility of external assets
• Reduction of the risk of external attacks
• Falta de visibilidad de activos externos
• Reducción del riesgo de ataques externos

Incentivized

• Wide range of capabilities that can be customized to fit each user's environment and needs
• Provides high-quality data and insights into detected vulnerabilities
• Great customer support

Incentivized

• Asset Attribution and Ownership Clarity
• Risk Prioritization and Business Context
• Noise and False Positives

Incentivized

• Configuration is not always intuitive, but the comprehensive training and documentation comes to the rescue.
• The mix of classic and beta UIs currently is confusing and we find the classic UI is actually better.

Incentivized

We like to renew tenable each year we have had it so far.

Incentivized

We rate Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management’s overall usability as 10 out of 10 because it delivers a strong balance between depth of capability and ease of use, particularly within organizations already operating in the Microsoft security ecosystem.

Incentivized

Overall it is good, it took a little while to understand it and figure things out but once you have a good grasp on it then, it is very good.

Incentivized

Support is usually really great at walking you through any steps you need to take when you get stuck on something. There are a few false positives and errors that have come up over the years that required their help to get through. Unfortunately, the steps required to diagnose some problems are more tedious than I think should be necessary. (IE: SQL instances can throw errors that clog up your logs because one plugin affects it in a certain way. The process to diagnose this is to watch timestamps of plugins in a log while monitoring the SQL logs at the same time and using your best guess as to what is causing it.)

Incentivized

Because Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management is part of the broader Microsoft Defender family (including Defender XDR, Entra ID, Azure Security, Sentinel, etc.), it:
Shares identity, endpoint, and threat context across tools
Reduces the need for custom integrations or connectors
Works in a “single pane of glass” experience for SOC analysts
Why it matters:
Organizations already invested in Microsoft security tools gain greater contextual insight and lower operational overhead.

Incentivized

I think Tenable and Qualys have a lot of similarities, I continue to go back to Tenable because of my familiarity and comfort level with it. I've also used a company called SecurityMetrics which has vulnerability scanning included but it is not as comprehensive as Tenable.

Incentivized

• Reduced Business Risk from Unknown External Assets
• Operational Efficiency and Cost Avoidance
• Faster Risk Identification During Change Events

Incentivized

• We're able to mitigate over 90% of our vulnerability risk without too much effort. It helps find where automated patching fails and we can plan a fix from the findings.
• A side effect of our scanning reveals new devices on our network that aren't cleared to be.

Incentivized