Without a doubt, one of the best vulnerability scanners on the market
Updated September 20, 2019
Without a doubt, one of the best vulnerability scanners on the market
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Nessus
I have used Nessus for performing the vulnerability scans largely. It is largely used for doing vulnerability assessments and penetration testing activities. No matter if you are a security researcher or a security consultant working for some organization, Nessus is known to everyone and is a really helpful tool.
- 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.
- Starting with the cost of Nessus, though it is available for free also it has some restrictions for the free version. Nessus essential which is a free version does not allow to perform internal/external PCI scan policies, config audits which I think is a drawback. As many security researchers, small organizations use this tool for vulnerability scans I think some additional features should be added into free version as Nessus professional version is not cost-friendly for everyone.
- I think Nessus can improve the way it shows scan status while the scan is ongoing. Once scans are started and running, it sometimes failed to show exactly how much percent of scan is completed, for example, it shows scan status from 0% completed to 100% completed directly without showing the in-between completion percentage.
- 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.
Tools like Qualys, Rapid7 stack up well against Nessus, but I think Nessus is superior overall when compared to them, given the features it has.
Do you think Tenable Nessus delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Tenable Nessus's feature set?
Yes
Did Tenable Nessus live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of Tenable Nessus go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Tenable Nessus again?
Yes