Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs. Tenable Nessus

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (formerly Microsoft Defender ATP) is a holistic, cloud delivered endpoint security solution that includes risk-based vulnerability management and assessment, attack surface reduction, behavioral based and cloud-powered next generation protection, endpoint detection and response (EDR), automatic investigation and remediation, managed hunting services, rich APIs, and unified security management.
$2.50
per user/per month
Tenable Nessus
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Tenable headquartered in Columbia offers Nessus, a vulnerability scanning and security assessment solution used to analyze an entity's security posture, vulnerability testing, and provide configuration assessments.
$2,790
Pricing
Microsoft Defender for EndpointTenable Nessus
Editions & Modules
Academic
$2.50
per user/per month
Standalone
$5.20
per user/per month
1 Year
$2,790.00
1 Year + Advanced Support
$3,190.00
2 Years
$5,440.00
2 Years + Advanced Support
$6,240.00
3 Years
$7,951.00
3 Years + Advanced Support
$9,151.00
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Microsoft Defender for EndpointTenable Nessus
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Microsoft Defender for EndpointTenable Nessus
Considered Both Products
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
Chose Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
MDE integrates much more into our M365 ecosystem than any other MDR possibly could. Bitdefender may have provided a similar level of endpoint protection but the reporting, vulnerability reporting and other incident tracking and correlation are critical in today's business …
Chose Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
Before we switched to using Endpoint, we were using McAfee and we weren't getting the most use out of that, weren't super happy with it, and so we switched, got rid of that and switched to just using all the endpoint features.
Tenable Nessus

No answer on this topic

Features
Microsoft Defender for EndpointTenable Nessus
Endpoint Security
Comparison of Endpoint Security features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
8.7
78 Ratings
2% above category average
Tenable Nessus
-
Ratings
Anti-Exploit Technology9.075 Ratings00 Ratings
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)9.177 Ratings00 Ratings
Centralized Management8.677 Ratings00 Ratings
Hybrid Deployment Support7.210 Ratings00 Ratings
Infection Remediation9.075 Ratings00 Ratings
Vulnerability Management8.672 Ratings00 Ratings
Malware Detection9.276 Ratings00 Ratings
Threat Intelligence
Comparison of Threat Intelligence features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
-
Ratings
Tenable Nessus
6.2
4 Ratings
26% below category average
Network Analytics00 Ratings1.02 Ratings
Threat Recognition00 Ratings7.04 Ratings
Vulnerability Classification00 Ratings9.53 Ratings
Automated Alerts and Reporting00 Ratings10.03 Ratings
Threat Analysis00 Ratings5.53 Ratings
Threat Intelligence Reporting00 Ratings5.03 Ratings
Automated Threat Identification00 Ratings5.53 Ratings
Vulnerability Management Tools
Comparison of Vulnerability Management Tools features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
-
Ratings
Tenable Nessus
7.5
4 Ratings
9% below category average
IT Asset Realization00 Ratings7.03 Ratings
Authentication00 Ratings7.53 Ratings
Configuration Monitoring00 Ratings8.04 Ratings
Web Scanning00 Ratings5.53 Ratings
Vulnerability Intelligence00 Ratings9.34 Ratings
User Ratings
Microsoft Defender for EndpointTenable Nessus
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(145 ratings)
9.0
(9 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.4
(10 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Usability
8.5
(20 ratings)
8.0
(5 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(7 ratings)
7.1
(4 ratings)
Implementation Rating
7.3
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Microsoft Defender for EndpointTenable Nessus
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft
I can definitely tell you where it’s more suited, because we haven’t come across any less appropriate scenarios. But definitely in regard to how we centrally manage our user space and our endpoints, it’s been beneficial from an API perspective and is really transferable, with strong collaboration with our Azure stack. It works very well.
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Tenable
It is an excellent tool for scanning servers, workstations, and network devices to identify missing patches and misconfiguration; we regularly use it to confirm patch effectiveness after the update; it also helps us for preparing audits such as iso 27001, and regulatory requirements, it also helps us to identify open ports and services that violate security.
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Pros
Microsoft
  • Definitely on the threat action and response. We didn't have a stress-response option before, but the dependent brand point provided it instantly. Also, it's doing UVA and machine learning, which we didn't have before. So it's definitely providing more sophisticated threat-detection capabilities than we had before.
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Tenable
  • Nessus is best at performing vulnerability scans, in fact, it gives findings and moreover accurate findings of the assessments. It does not do penetration testing or exploit the vulnerabilities because it is concerned about scanning the systems/applications.
  • In fact, Nessus has multiple profiles/policies to perform different types of scans such as, scans oriented for PCI-DSS, malware scans, web application scans, bad shell shock detection scan to name a few.
  • Nessus has the ability to classify the vulnerabilities into risk-based categories from critical to even informational which I think is one of the things that separates Nessus from other vulnerability scanners.
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Cons
Microsoft
  • The only thing is sometimes, because Microsoft has so many platforms, it gets a little confusing, like am I in the security platform? Am I in Purview? Where am I at right now? Because there's so many sites that are kind of doing a lot of the same thing, and so that does get a little confusing from time to time, but outside of that, it's a pretty good product.
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Tenable
  • The tool has lots of options for setting up before scanning any device, this methodology could be simplified further with default configuration for various devices predefined, anyhow we can use this technique by making use of policies.
  • For advanced users we cannot disable the plugins inside the plugin groups, we can enable the whole set of plugins at a time, for few hundreds its ok, but thousands of plugins are of waste of resource and time.
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Likelihood to Renew
Microsoft
Cost add-ons for Security features is nickel and diming the process to keep pace with cybercrime. Limited Education budgets require us to be more pro-active in finding cost-effective measures to protect our devices, staff and students. Defender is a strong, well-featured product that is pricing itself out of the education market
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Tenable
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.
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Usability
Microsoft
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a great EDR to have that works quickly and silently in the background and it integrates well with other Microsoft services. As an IT manager, I can appreciate that I do not get bombarded by alerts for every small detail. On the flipside, the management site can use some work in being more clear and should be more streamlined so I'm not clicking through multiple pages to figure out what happened
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Tenable
Tenable Nessus is a great product and provides a lot of value, but it is difficult to set up and use and the amount of data it generates can be overwhelming. It does help us prioritize based on the severity of the detection, however there are sometimes mitigating factors that we have implemented that Nessus does not account for, which causes lots of noise in the reports.
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Reliability and Availability
Microsoft
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint chugs along just fine no matter what we throw at it and what systems it's running on. It doesn't take up a lot of resources either, so that's welcomed.
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Tenable
No answers on this topic
Performance
Microsoft
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is easy on memory and resources on clients.
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Tenable
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Microsoft
The first time I tried to onboard my macOS endpoints to MDE I struggled for quite a bit. I had to reach out to Microsoft's MDE support team. The tech was very helpful in walking me through the steps during a screen share session
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Tenable
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.
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Implementation Rating
Microsoft
Deployment was handled by our team here and everything went pretty smoothly. We did have a few hiccups in our test group, but that only took a bit to get ironed out.
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Tenable
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Microsoft
Previously, we've used Sophos. We've used, way back when, McAfee, Norton, Symantec, all those. And we finally settled on Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. We're a Microsoft technology stack shop. So obviously it was natural. It's built into Windows, so we're not adding additional agents. Some of the other vendors and their agents, for a while, would compete with CPU usage. And so it actually slowed down the machines. Because Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is built into the Windows product, Microsoft is going to ensure that it does not affect the other productivity tools that a user may use.
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Tenable
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.
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Scalability
Microsoft
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is easily scaled from small orgs to giant enterprises.
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Tenable
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Microsoft
  • Reduced incidents of security breaches lead to lower remediation costs and avoid potential financial losses and reputational damage.
  • Reduces the need for additional third-party security solutions and training, thereby lowering overall security management costs.
  • Increased efficiency and productivity of IT staff lead to better allocation of resources and cost savings.
  • Reduces the risk of fines and sanctions associated with non-compliance, ensuring business continuity and protecting revenue.
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Tenable
  • 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.
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ScreenShots

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Screenshots

Screenshot of blocked activitiesScreenshot of Detects & respondsScreenshot of discovers vulnerabilityScreenshot of Eliminates blind spotsScreenshot of Risk management