We compared Tenable Nessus and Pentera based on our user's reviews in several parameters.
Tenable Nessus is praised for its vulnerability scanning capabilities, customer service, reasonable pricing, and value in improving cybersecurity. On the other hand, Pentera stands out for its security testing capabilities, user-friendly interface, efficient vulnerability tracking, and positive return on investment. Areas for improvement include user interface, system stability, performance, and customer support.
Features: Tenable Nessus is valued for its comprehensive vulnerability scanning and prioritization capabilities, while Pentera is praised for its extensive range of security tests and efficient vulnerability tracking and reporting system.
Pricing and ROI: The setup cost of Tenable Nessus is praised for being relatively low and the licensing process is straightforward, according to user feedback. On the other hand, the cost, setup, and licensing of Pentera have been discussed by customers, with opinions shared about pricing, initial investment, and license agreement., The Tenable Nessus product has received positive feedback regarding its effectiveness, reliability, and ease of use, providing value in terms of ROI. Users also appreciated its comprehensive reporting features. On the other hand, Pentera users expressed satisfaction and benefit from their experience with the product, indicating a positive ROI.
Room for Improvement: The room for improvement in Tenable Nessus includes user feedback on areas that need to be addressed. On the other hand, Pentera has areas to improve such as enhancing the user interface, improving system stability, increasing platform performance, and enhancing customer support and documentation.
Deployment and customer support: Tenable Nessus and Pentera both have users mentioning spending three months on deployment and an additional week on setup. However, Pentera also has users mentioning a week for deployment and another week for setup, indicating a potentially faster implementation process compared to Tenable Nessus., The customer service for Tenable Nessus is highly regarded, with users praising the effectiveness and responsiveness of the support team. On the other hand, customers of Pentera appreciate the helpful and responsive assistance they have received from the company.
The summary above is based on 41 interviews we conducted recently with Tenable Nessus and Pentera users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"The product is easy to use."
"The vulnerability scanner, exploit achievements, and remediation actions are all great."
"Maybe there are some remediation steps on the website, we can mask sensitive information on the website better."
"What I like the most about Pentera is its solution-oriented approach."
"The most valuable feature of Pentera is that you can do continuous vulnerability assessment, which is automated."
"Nessus gives me a good preview of vulnerabilities and good suggestions for remediation. It's easy to find a description of a given vulnerability and solutions for it."
"I have experience with it on my attack stations, and it's pretty good to optimize. Personally, I think Nessus is quite a good product."
"Nessus is good at finding out what nodes you have in place. It will then provide you a report, by node, of what the vulnerabilities are. It does it quickly and stealthfully."
"The most valuable features of Tenable Nessus are the scanning option. Advanced scanning is highly useful. The offline config audits and application assessments are useful."
"It provides multiple recommendations towards the remedy of vulnerabilities."
"The solution is easy to understand for users because instructions are included on the platform."
"It does exactly what you expect it to do, and its pricing is great. We couldn't really ask for a better deal."
"Among the most valuable features are scanning for vulnerabilities and the reporting. The reporting templates are okay. I like that I can see all the hosts with different vulnerabilities."
"Pentera's general dashboards could be improved and made more specific in terms of vulnerabilities that I'm discovering."
"The vulnerability scanner, exploit achievements, and remediation actions are all great."
"Maybe scalability. I know that the Pentera right now is high level in order to scan big deals over 500 IPs and not less, and not less. That can be more granular. This will be useful."
"There is room for improvement in virtualization compatibility."
"The price could be improved."
"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."
"Tenable Nessus could improve by having more steady updates which will reduce the vulnerabilities."
"It would be a good idea if they have a simulation of attacks or a use case for finding a new vulnerability or dealing with a zero-day attack."
"There is room for improvement in finishing the transition to the cloud. We'd like to see them keep on improving the Tenable.io product, so that we can migrate to it entirely, instead of having to keep the Tenable.sc on-prem product."
"Tenable Nessus could improve the reporting by adding some dashboards. The reports are a hassle at this time. Tenable.io has more detailed reports. Having a better dashboard that can show where the vulnerabilities are and be categorized would be helpful. We then could present them to upper management for a deep overview of our network posture which they do not see."
"They need more flexible pricing."
"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."
"Technically, it is an excellent and the best solution available in Libya. My only concern is related to its pricing. They are an emerging company in Libya, and they need to put in some effort to provide us with very good prices so that customers can go with the best solution. Chinese companies are getting into the market here, and they're providing very cheap solutions."
Pentera is ranked 15th in Vulnerability Management with 5 reviews while Tenable Nessus is ranked 3rd in Vulnerability Management with 75 reviews. Pentera is rated 8.2, while Tenable Nessus is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Pentera writes "A stable solution that can be used to do continuous and automated vulnerability assessments". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Tenable Nessus writes "Unlimited assets for one price and quick, agentless results". Pentera is most compared with Cymulate, Picus Security, Horizon3.ai, Qualys VMDR and XM Cyber, whereas Tenable Nessus is most compared with Qualys VMDR, Rapid7 InsightVM, Tenable Security Center, Tenable Vulnerability Management and Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management. See our Pentera vs. Tenable Nessus report.
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