We performed a comparison between Rapid7 Metasploit and Tenable Nessus based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Vulnerability Management solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The most valuable features of the solution are the scripts, the modules, and the tools that the Rapid7 Metasploit framework has."
"The option to generate phishing emails has proven to be very valuable in understanding the behavior of users."
"The solution is open source and has many small targetted penetration tests that have been written by many people that are useful. You can choose different subjects for the test, such as Oracle databases or Apache servers."
"All of the features are great."
"The Search Engineering feature is good."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten...Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten."
"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."
"It allows us to concentrate solely on identified vulnerabilities without the hassle of additional setup."
"A valuable feature of the solution is that it is easy to understand."
"Makes ransomware checking and OS auditing and implementation relatively easy."
"Tenable Nessus is an absolutely stable and fantastic product."
"It provides multiple recommendations towards the remedy of vulnerabilities."
"Security is the key number because it can start to scan with a few clicks instead of credits, which is a bit complicated. So simplicity is the first advantage. Then the generated reports are well done and easy to present to management. The quality of the scan is quite good in detecting the severity. The solution has simplicity. Also, it has frequent updates so that is also a valuable feature."
"Easy to set up vulnerability scanner with good stability and a responsive technical support team."
"Tenable Nessus is cheap and flexible."
"Quick assessments, compliance scores, and results are provided without having to do agents."
"The solution is not user-friendly and has room for improvement."
"Rapid7 Metasploit could be made easier for new users to learn."
"If your company's patch is not up to date, but you have other detection or defense solutions such as endpoint detection and response and antivirus software, the product exploit may not work effectively. This is because its exploit database update process is slow and not real-time. For zero-day vulnerabilities or new security threats, relying on Rapid7 Metasploit alone may not be effective."
"There are numerous outdated exploits in their database that should be updated."
"I would like to see more capabilities, more functions, and more features. More types of attack vectors."
"Metasploit cannot be installed on a machine with an antivirus."
"The open-source version has reporting limitations. You need to develop these capabilities yourself. Built-in reporting is an excellent feature for penetration testing, but it isn't a must-have. The solution could also cover more vulnerabilities. Metasploit has around 10,000 exploits in its library, but more is always better."
"Advanced Infrastructure should be implemented in the next release for better orchestration."
"Tenable Nessus could improve the price."
"In Nessus Professional, the main drawback was that we could have a single-user login password. So it could be better in terms of security."
"Tenable Nessus could improve reporting and information sharing. It would be helpful if we could share the reports and have a little bit better flexibility in the reporting of the data."
"Consumes more system resources when it's running."
"The solution could improve security updates."
"The price could be more reasonable. I used the free Nessus version in my lab with which you can only scan 16 IP addresses. If I wanted to put it in the lab in my network at work, and I'm doing a test project that has over 30 nodes in it, I can't use the free version of Nessus to scan it because there are only 16 IP addresses. I can't get an accurate scan. The biggest thing with all the cybersecurity tools out there nowadays, especially in 2020, is that there's a rush to get a lot of skilled cybersecurity analysts out there. Some of these companies need to realize that a lot of us are working from home and doing proof of concepts, and some of them don't even offer trials, or you get a trial and it is only 16 IP addresses. I can't really do anything with it past 16. I'm either guessing or I'm doing double work to do my scans. Let's say there was a license for 50 users or 50 IP addresses. I would spend about 200 bucks for that license to accomplish my job. This is the biggest complaint I have as of right now with all cybersecurity tools, including Rapid7, out there, especially if I'm in a company that is trying to build its cybersecurity program. How am I going to tell my boss, who has no real budget of what he needs to build his cybersecurity program, to go spend over $100,000 for a tool he has never seen, whereas, it would pack the punch if I could say, "Let me spend 200 bucks for a 50 user IP address license of this product, do a proof of concept to scan 50 nodes, and provide the reason for why we need it." I've been a director, and now I'm an ISO. When I was a director, I had a budget for an IT department, so I know how budgets work. As an ISO, the only thing that's missing from my C-level is I don't have to deal with employees and budgets, but I have everything else. It's hard for me to build the program and say, "Hey, I need these tools." If I can't get a trial, I would scratch that off the list and find something else. I'm trying to set up Tenable.io to do external PCI scans. The documentation says to put in your IP addresses or your external IP addresses. However, if the IP address is not routable, then it says that you have to use an internal agent to scan. This means that you set up a Nessus agent internally and scan, which makes sense. However, it doesn't work because when you use the plugin and tell it that it is a PCI external, it says, "You cannot use an internal agent to scan external." The documentation needs to be a little bit more clear about that. It needs to say if you're using the PCI external plugin, all IP addresses must be external and routable. It should tell the person who's setting it up, "Wait a minute. If you have an MPLS network and you're in a multi-tenant environment and the people who hold the network schema only provide you with the IP addresses just for your tenant, then you are not going to know what the actual true IP address that Tenable needs to do a PCI scan." I've been working on Tenable.io to set up PCI scans for the last ten days. I have been going back and forth to the network thinking I need this or that only to find out that I'm teaching their team, "Hey, you know what, guys? I need you to look past your MPLS network. I need you to go to the edge's edge. Here's who you need to ask to give me the whitelist to allow here." I had the blurb that says the plugin for external PCI must be reachable, and you cannot use an internal agent. I could have cut a few days because I thought I had it, but then when I ran it, it said that you can't run it this way. I wasted a few hours in a day. In terms of new features, it doesn't require new features. It is a tool that has been out there for years. It is used in the cybersecurity community. It has got the CV database in it, and there are other plugins that you could pass through. It has got APIs you can attach to it. They can just improve the database and continue adding to the database and the plugins to make sure those don't have false positives. If you're a restaurant and you focus on fried chicken, you have no business doing hamburgers."
"Multiple user access would be an area for improvement from a user-access perspective. A role-based access control feature would be great because at present, there is a limitation with only one account. If that account gets compromised or gets locked, then we will encounter problems."
"The solution should be able to support more devices."
Rapid7 Metasploit is ranked 12th in Vulnerability Management with 18 reviews while Tenable Nessus is ranked 3rd in Vulnerability Management with 75 reviews. Rapid7 Metasploit is rated 7.6, while Tenable Nessus is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Rapid7 Metasploit writes "Helps find vulnerabilities in a system to determine whether the system needs to be upgraded". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Tenable Nessus writes "Unlimited assets for one price and quick, agentless results". Rapid7 Metasploit is most compared with Pentera, Rapid7 InsightVM, Acunetix, Nucleus and Qualys VMDR, whereas Tenable Nessus is most compared with Qualys VMDR, Rapid7 InsightVM, Tenable Security Center, Tenable Vulnerability Management and Amazon Inspector. See our Rapid7 Metasploit vs. Tenable Nessus report.
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