PDQ Deploy & Inventory vs. Tenable Nessus

PDQ Inventory is great if you have a local network of computers on or off a domain. As long as you have a way to log into them with common credentials. Great for large organizations, particularly ones interconnected with VPNs. PDQ Inventory isn't so great for PCs that aren't connected to the same LAN the server is on. (i.e. non-vpn remote users) They used to have a remote agent you could install, but it was removed after numerous issues.

Incentivized

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.

• Push out new software
• Push out Updates to current software
• Push out patches and updates that we don't have other ways to push out
• Keep end-users updated with little involvement

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• As good as there email support is.. would like a live operator option
• Some updates are hard to understand when 5 versions of the same program exist
• Thats about it, PDQ deploy is the best out there

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

PDQ is very useful and one of the tools that we use a lot.

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

Logical - If I want to do something with the software, it is quite clear on how I need to go about that. There isn't some weird process that is proprietary to just that vendor and is counterintuitive. What I want to see is displayed with just a couple clicks.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

The built-in help menus and general ease of use render whatever systems support there might be almost irrelevant. There is stability in the system's simplicity; if you're in the position to use such a product, you're your own best friend. Simple web searches more often than not turn up the solution to any little niggles, such as what silent install switches specific applications require (a remarkably wide choice of options exist). System updates are timely and unobtrusive, installing in no time at all. Maybe I've just been lucky; if so, long may it continue!

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

This software was referred to us by an IT professional. Previously, we were installing the software with the help of remote desktop applications but it was very time consuming; it was wasting the user's time since he could not use his computer. After testing PDQ Deploy, we just never looked back.

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

• Speed of deployment is very positive for new software setup, saving hours of testing and deployment locally
• Made patching for large computer estate very efficient, another positive for staff not having to spend hours of patching individual machines
• Works well for small team of IT's and again makes various repetitive tasks much easier

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