We performed a comparison between Amazon Inspector 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 vulnerability discovery is valuable, and they also rank those vulnerabilities for you. So, you could rapidly attack some of the higher, severe vulnerabilities as they pop up, if they do pop up."
"The automated vulnerability detection aspect is most valuable."
"The integration of Amazon Inspector with other AWS services has enhanced our security. Security Hub is a major asset because it allows us to centralize data from various AWS services. We can integrate third-party tools as well. It is just a single-click option."
"The findings dashboards are neat and easy to understand, offering clear demarcations for different types of findings and detailed insights into specific vulnerabilities and their associated instances. It is not a place where everything is dumped together. It offers an easy-to-understand layout."
"It also has an executive report where you don't have to provide the client all the detail for them to sift though. But if they wish to dig through the detail they can."
"I am impressed with the tool's vulnerability scanning."
"With the Tenable Nessus enterprise edition, you have unlimited licenses to scan the device."
"Quick assessments, compliance scores, and results are provided without having to do agents."
"Overall Zoom is a good solution."
"It provides multiple recommendations towards the remedy of vulnerabilities."
"The features of Tenable Nessus that I have found most valuable are its reliability and its ability to collate a dependable output, where we are able to get the same vulnerability when we test manually. The output is quite reliable."
"Scanners and reports using CIS templates ("de-facto" standard, easy to fix and to locate correction tips at documentation), tests against cloud providers, database profiles, several types of telecom devices, and others highly customizable scans."
"There is room for improvement in the scanning capabilities. I'd like to see broader coverage in terms of the vulnerabilities detected."
"There isn't too much to improve right now. Scanning on demand or as a part of the pipeline versus a post pipeline solution would be good, but it is not a deal breaker by any means."
"One major area for improvement is remediation. My team works on remediating findings over time, likely using available patches. However, easier integration with Amazon's patching services would be very helpful."
"It has a limited scope. So, AWS Inspector primarily focuses on the security of the EC2 instance. So, if your architecture includes other AWS services, then you may need to use additional tools for your comprehensive security assessment. So that is one con. Another is, like, we have a dependency on agents."
"The solution should be able to support more devices."
"The reporting feature needs to be improved."
"They need more flexible pricing."
"They should try to create an all-in-one solution."
"The features are limited when it comes to scanning network devices for vulnerabilities."
"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."
"It wasn't very clear how the scripts are running the scans. There's information about the script but it's not straightforward. The script information for each of the plugins should be available, but it doesn't give us straightforward direct information about how it was executed. That needs to be more clear."
"The price could be reduced."
Amazon Inspector is ranked 25th in Vulnerability Management with 4 reviews while Tenable Nessus is ranked 3rd in Vulnerability Management with 75 reviews. Amazon Inspector is rated 7.8, while Tenable Nessus is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Amazon Inspector writes "Primarily focuses on security of EC2 instances, provides point-in-time assessments rather than real time protection but provides automated vulnerability detection". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Tenable Nessus writes "Unlimited assets for one price and quick, agentless results". Amazon Inspector is most compared with Tenable Vulnerability Management, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Tenable Cloud Security, JFrog Xray and Rapid7 Metasploit, whereas Tenable Nessus is most compared with Qualys VMDR, Rapid7 InsightVM, Tenable Security Center, Tenable Vulnerability Management and Microsoft Intune. See our Amazon Inspector vs. Tenable Nessus report.
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