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Cisco Vulnerability Management (formerly Kenna.VM) vs Tenable Nessus comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Vulnerability Managem...
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Cisco Security Portfolio (11th), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (20th)
Tenable Nessus
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
88
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Security Software solutions, they serve different purposes. Cisco Vulnerability Management (formerly Kenna.VM) is designed for Risk-Based Vulnerability Management and holds a mindshare of 2.6%, up 2.1% compared to last year.
Tenable Nessus, on the other hand, focuses on Vulnerability Management, holds 5.0% mindshare, down 10.2% since last year.
Risk-Based Vulnerability Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Vulnerability Management (formerly Kenna.VM)2.6%
Qualys VMDR12.1%
Rapid7 InsightVM10.5%
Other74.8%
Risk-Based Vulnerability Management
Vulnerability Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Tenable Nessus5.0%
Wiz6.4%
Qualys VMDR4.9%
Other83.7%
Vulnerability Management
 

Featured Reviews

AshishPaliwal - PeerSpot reviewer
Self-employed at Self-employed
Offers contextual prioritization and risk-based remediation of vulnerability
An improvement would be some sort of an integration with any GRC suite. There are a lot of GRC suites available, like Archer, MetricStream, Rsam, Protiviti, for example. So how would a solution like this work if my company has already invested thousands or maybe millions in a GRC solution? Do I still need it and how does it fit into an existing SAP environment? There could be interoperability, having more data sources, integrating Splunk, Qualys, FireEye, Rapid7, Carbon Black. I'm sure all that can be done to an extent, with a little more insight and a little more accuracy on the industry numbers and trends. I'd like the solution to offer any sort of assistance in any way with the remediation part, not just identification of vulnerability risk, and that is second.
MohammedJaffir - PeerSpot reviewer
Founder at Cipheroot
Has enabled me to reduce false positives and perform deep credential auditing with seamless integrations
I mostly use the configuration audit feature for the audit configuration as a scan policy, and I will use it for credential audit, which helps me scan credentials access such as local administrator or root access, performing a deeper and more accurate check of local configuration settings and file systems, making it a highly recommended feature. Regarding integration capabilities, we can integrate Tenable Nessus with SIM tools such as Splunk, IBM QRadar, and Azure Sentinel, as well as with ticketing systems such as ServiceNow, Jira, and Slack. There is no complexity as it is very easy to integrate everything. In terms of the reporting feature, while vulnerability scanning can throw some false positives, Tenable Nessus has very few, achieving a reduction of 75% to 80% false positives with manual analysis needed. We can generate standard Nessus reports that typically include host summaries and vulnerabilities by host and plugin, alongside solutions and remediation recommendations. The main benefits I get from Tenable Nessus are complete asset inventory and comprehensive attack surface management, allowing us to prioritize vulnerabilities based on risk, focusing on true risk and threat path analysis.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The risk context of any vulnerability is a valuable feature."
"I have found the vulnerability assessment and the reports to be useful."
"Quick assessments, compliance scores, and results are provided without having to do agents."
"The automatic scanner and scheduler are pretty cool."
"The most valuable aspect of this solution is that you receive the entire report, which details the breakdown, especially in terms of critical, high, low, and mediums."
"Tenable Nessus is a very scalable solution."
"A valuable feature of the solution is that it is easy to understand."
"We can now deliver highly professional consulting using the product."
"I like the fact that it was not expensive. I like that it's user-friendly."
 

Cons

"An improvement would be some sort of an integration with any GRC suite."
"One area with room for improvement is instead of there just being a PDF format for output, I'd like the option of an Excel spreadsheet, whereby I could better track remediation efforts and provide reporting off of that."
"I think the reporting templates could be improved with Tenable Nessus."
"The inventory management function in this solution needs improvement."
"The accuracy of the vulnerability assessment is not up to par yet, as false alarms and false positives occur often."
"EQA's and dashboards should be addressed in the next release."
"The price and scalability of the solution could improve."
"Tenable Nessus is very costly compared to OpenVAS and sits on the higher side."
"One significant drawback we encounter is the tool's tendency to flag patched packages incorrectly. For instance, if a package is patched by Debian maintainers but not updated to a major or minor version, Nessus may still flag it as vulnerable based on its database. This discrepancy leads to false alarms and requires our developers, system admins, and DevOps teams to address them."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I think the pricing is based on the number of endpoints, so it's more subscription-based."
"In general, it is extremely expensive."
"Nowadays, your vulnerability applications are going to be kind of pricey because lots of them, including Rapid7, are based upon a base price, but then they add in the nodes. That's where they get you. If you're a big network, obviously, you need to scan everything. Therefore, it's going to be costly. The risk and insurance money associated with having ransomware on my networks is going to cost me more money, time, and marketing than the price of the tool. That's why I'm speaking only as an information security officer to security operations. This is the tool that is there in my toolbox to say whether we vulnerable or not. At this point, I don't care about how much it costs my company to have it because if I wasn't able to report it and we got ransomware, then who cares? I'm probably going to be out of business because it happened. That's why I don't care about the price. I have it, and I could use it effectively and do my report. At the end of the day, even if we get ransomware, as long as I reported it, followed my protocol, and put in the change, irrespective of whether it was ignored or denied, I did my job."
"The solution is worth the cost. It's a good investment."
"While Tenable Nessus is a good enterprise solution, the high price would likely make it prohibitive to smaller organizations."
"It has a fair cost and very good cost-benefit ratio."
"The price of Tenable Nessus could improve, it is expensive."
"The solution is expensive."
"Tenable Nessus is affordable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Retailer
16%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business40
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise35
 

Questions from the Community

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How would you choose between Rapid7 InsightVM and Tenable Nessus?
You have full visibility across cloud, network, virtual, and containerized infrastructures with Rapid7 Insight VM. You can easily prioritize vulnerabilities using attacker analytics. Overall, Rapid...
What's the difference between Tenable Nessus and Tenable.io Vulnerability Management?
Tenable Nessus is a vulnerability assessment solution that is both easy to deploy and easy to manage. The design of the program is such that if a company should desire to handle the installation t...
What do you like most about Tenable Nessus?
We have around 500 virtual machines. Therefore, we conduct monthly scans and open tickets for our developers to address identified vulnerabilities. These scans cover the servers, other network equi...
 

Also Known As

Kenna.VM, Kenna Security, Kenna, Kenna Security Platform
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

TransUnion
Bitbrains, Tesla, Just Eat, Crosskey Banking Solutions, Covenant Health, Youngstown State University
Find out what your peers are saying about Qualys, Tenable, Rapid7 and others in Risk-Based Vulnerability Management. Updated: March 2026.
884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.