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SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM) vs. Tenable Nessus

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)

    Score8.3 out of 10
    N/ASolarWinds Network Configuration Manager is network diagnostics and troubleshooting technology, from Austin-based SolarWinds.N/A

    Tenable Nessus

    Score8.8 out of 10
    N/ATenable 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
    SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)Tenable Nessus
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    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
    SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)Tenable Nessus
    Free Trial
    YesNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)Tenable Nessus
    Considered Both Products
    SolarWinds
    Chose SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)
    They are used in tandem. Our organization uses many modules within the dashboard of NCM (Orion).
    Incentivized
    Tenable
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    92%
    Would buy again
    34 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    8 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    89%
    Delivers good value for the price
    31 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    8 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    95%
    Happy with the feature set
    35 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    8 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    94%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    31 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    8 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    94%
    Implementation went as expected
    32 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    7 Answers
    Features
    SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)Tenable Nessus
    Threat Intelligence
    Comparison of Threat Intelligence features of SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM) and Tenable Nessus
    Feature
    SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)
    -
    Ratings
    Tenable Nessus
    6.3
    4 Ratings
    25% below category average
    Network Analytics00 Ratings1.02 Ratings
    Threat Recognition00 Ratings7.14 Ratings
    Vulnerability Classification00 Ratings9.53 Ratings
    Automated Alerts and Reporting00 Ratings10.03 Ratings
    Threat Analysis00 Ratings5.63 Ratings
    Threat Intelligence Reporting00 Ratings5.13 Ratings
    Automated Threat Identification00 Ratings5.63 Ratings
    Vulnerability Management Tools
    Comparison of Vulnerability Management Tools features of SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM) and Tenable Nessus
    Feature
    SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)
    -
    Ratings
    Tenable Nessus
    7.5
    4 Ratings
    10% below category average
    IT Asset Realization00 Ratings7.03 Ratings
    Authentication00 Ratings7.63 Ratings
    Configuration Monitoring00 Ratings8.14 Ratings
    Web Scanning00 Ratings5.63 Ratings
    Vulnerability Intelligence00 Ratings9.34 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)Tenable Nessus
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    No answers on this topic
    Qualys TruRisk Platform
    Score6 out of 10
    Enterprises
    No answers on this topic
    Tenable Vulnerability Management
    Score8.9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)Tenable Nessus
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.0
    (142 ratings)
    9.0
    (9 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.1
    (6 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    7.0
    (9 ratings)
    8.0
    (5 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.7
    (9 ratings)
    7.1
    (4 ratings)
    Online Training
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)Tenable Nessus
    Likelihood to Recommend
    SolarWinds
    Network Configuration Manager is well suited for backing up configurations of all your devices. It also has a great comparison tool for seeing only the differences in config. Another great feature is it's ability to push a script to any number of devices. This is very handy for pushing changes to one, 10 or multiple devices. There are also some great reports that you can run against the devices in inventory
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Read full review
    Pros
    SolarWinds
    • Integrates with Network Performance Management for Alerting and Reporting.
    • NetPath and detects issues due to Configuration Change.
    • Keeps a record of which user made the change.
    • Which devices are not being backed up, devices where backups are failing, dashboard and alerting available.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    SolarWinds
    • For our use case, it does everything great and some of the features we underutilize but I would like to be able to set a configuration baseline when initially adding a node instead of after the configuration is pulled but it's not a particularly big deal to let it pull the configuration then set it as the baseline.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    SolarWinds
    Medium complexity to set up in the beginning if using any non-standard devices or configurations, else fairly easy (e.g. Cisco Nexus or IOS-based devices). Reports are fairly straightforward to set up. Updates to the platform are fairly straightforward and don't take a major effort. Easy to add or remove devices.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    SolarWinds
    The user interface is lacking. It is difficult to navigate at times and things can be done multiple ways. Quite often I am confused by how their notification structure works. It is not very intuitive. They do offer a free Academy. They also offer a community of other technical folks. I have enjoyed both.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    SolarWinds
    To be fair, I have not had to involve Support in a number of years, but when I did, I was greeted with enthusiastic engineers who wanted to understand and solve the issue. It was a fairly complex scenario and I have discovered in my most recent implementation that engineering included that option as a standard now.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Online Training
    SolarWinds
    Solarwinds has actually produced new training since I last used it that is available on their site at any time. Their previous training was more than enough to get us started but now there is significantly more content. Since I'm comfortable with the Orion platform and the products we use I haven't checked the new training out yet but we have new staff go through portions of that training and they always come away with an understanding of the platform and ready to use it
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Tenable
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    SolarWinds
    it was a fairly easy implementation and everything was pretty straightforward. only challenge we had was getting all the snmp communities updated on the networking equipment
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Tenable
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    SolarWinds
    At the time SolarWinds was the biggest player in the space and their whole portfolio was very comprehensive. As time progressed and newer technologies came about (i.e. SDWAN) their products couldn't keep up with the consumer demands and changing market. Security became such a big focus that once Solarwinds got hacked we had to remove all their products from our environment
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    SolarWinds
    • Saves 100s of hours a year in man hours over manual configuration.
    • Saved easily 50k in lost revenue when a switch rebooted with months old unsaved configuration. NCM let us quickly restore a snapshot of the running config from the previous day.
    • Saves us several man hours per week of config auditing by reducing all changes to a summary email.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM) Screenshots

    Screenshot of Network Automation -  manage rapid change across complex and multi-vendor networks, reduce time needed to complete repetitive tasks, and maintain standards and service levels for uninterrupted ITScreenshot of Config Backup - rest easy knowing you can locate the most current configuration and quickly apply it to a replacement spare, or to roll back a blown configuration.Screenshot of Vulnerability Scanning - Take the hassle out of vulnerability scanning using NCM's integration with the National Vulnerability Database and access to the most current CVE’s to identify vulnerabilities in your Cisco devices.Screenshot of Inventory Management - Be able to know what devices are connected to your network, their hardware and software configurations, and when they approach end-of-service and end-of-life, with NCM device configuration management tool.Screenshot of User Management - Use NCM's integrated console to lock down devices from unauthorized access, delegate who can view device details and make configuration changes, and determine when network changes can occur.Screenshot of Baselines and Diffs - IT professionals can get a more comprehensive view by leveraging baselines across multiple nodes. Diff view in NCM’s network configuration management tool is designed to highlight only those lines that changed.