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
Wireshark
Score 9.3 out of 10
N/A
Wireshark is a free and open source network troubleshooting tool.
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.
I don't know of any other tool that works as well as Wireshark for packet capture an inspection. It's extremely easy to get up and running, and even with little to no knowledge of how to use the tool, you can be looking at all the traffic coming off a network interface.
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Nessus points out any vulnerable or outdated software Technologies used in the system, thus eliminating any chances for security flaws being turned up.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.
A more user-friendly interface would be nice, but then again it is not really designed for those who are not quite comfortable with this type of software.
Changes to functionality on updates - this can sometimes happen unexpectedly and can be an annoyance.
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.
I give Wireshark a 10 for usability because it is very usable. Just about anyone can capture packets within a few seconds of opening the program. The analysis is a science but as far as just using Wireshark; it's very easy.
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.
I don't believe Wireshark has "true" support as the software is open source. However, there is an active & friendly community around Wireshark that are more than happy to help answer questions. From a comprehensive Wiki and FAQ section on the site to the Ask a Question forum and bug tracker section, there's plenty of support options to make sure your questions and issues are addressed.
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.
Wireshark is a free tool that came highly recommended by one of our former network security consultants. Using the tool he was able to resolve all of our higher tier network tickets, so we observed first hand why we needed to add Wireshark into our toolset. We received in-depth instruction and training scenarios that demonstrated the effectiveness and power of the product, so we didn't spend any time reviewing competing products.
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.
