Morphisec vs Tenable Nessus comparison

Why PeerSpot?

Morphisec and Tenable are both solutions in the Vulnerability Management category. Morphisec is ranked #54, while Tenable is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.7. Morphisec holds a 1.0% mindshare in VM, compared to Tenable’s 3.6% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Morphisec users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 98% of Tenable users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Tenable Nessus and Morphisec are competitors in the cybersecurity tools category, each catering to different aspects of vulnerability management and endpoint protection. Tenable Nessus offers a comprehensive approach to vulnerability scanning with strong integration capabilities, while Morphisec provides specialized endpoint attack prevention.

Features: Tenable Nessus provides comprehensive vulnerability scanning with predictive prioritization and automated scanning. It offers extensive compliance checks coverage and easy integration with other tools. Morphisec prevents endpoint attacks without relying on signatures; it provides blocking of memory-based attacks and uses a deterministic approach for threat prevention.

Room for Improvement: Tenable Nessus could improve its reporting, GUI, and integration with cloud environments, with a need for better customization options and false positive management. Morphisec users express a desire for better reporting features, automated updates, and improved detection accuracy to reduce false positives.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Tenable Nessus is effective in on-premises and hybrid cloud deployments. Customer feedback on its support varies, with some users noting slow resolution times. Morphisec focuses on cloud deployments, both private and public, and maintains proactive customer communication with satisfactory support.

Pricing and ROI: Tenable Nessus is competitively priced with various licensing options suitable for different organization sizes, providing good ROI through effective vulnerability identification. Morphisec, though slightly more expensive, offers strong endpoint protection with solid ROI by minimizing risks and potential costs through enhanced security features.

To learn more, read our detailed Morphisec vs. Tenable Nessus Report (Updated: September 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Morphisec vs. Tenable Nessus

September 2026

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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

Qualys TotalCloud

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Qualys TotalCloud is 1.2%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Morphisec is 1.0%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tenable Nessus is 3.6%, down from 7.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Vulnerability Management Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Tenable Nessus	3.6%
Qualys TotalCloud	1.2%
Morphisec	1.0%
Other	94.2%

Vulnerability Management

Featured Reviews

reviewer2859021

Sr Security Engineer at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees

Risk-based triage has transformed container security and now prioritizes high-impact threats

The best features Qualys TotalCloud offers currently include managing cloud infrastructure and container security while facing major challenges such as alert fatigue. Traditional vulnerability scanners flag hundreds of CVEs on short-lived Kubernetes containers, some of which have no internet exposure or are gone before we can even triage them. I leverage Qualys TotalCloud to move beyond static CVSS. I use it to implement runtime exposure, correlation risk reprioritization, and shift-left integration. This notifies developers to fix a base image upstream rather than patching live ephemeral instances. In my work with cloud and container security, the biggest operational hurdle was alert fatigue. I use Qualys to shift left from static CVSS severity to context-aware risk prioritization. I correlated raw vulnerability data with real-time risk factors such as public network exposure, active runtime execution, or overly permissive IAM roles. This allows us to immediately drop the priority of isolated containers and escalate lower-severity CVEs that sit on an exposed, high-risk path. We can map these findings directly back to our CI/CD pipelines so developers can patch the root base images upstream. We have drastically cut down the signal-to-noise ratio, saved a lot of manual hours doing triage work, and ensured engineering effort goes directly towards high-impact risk reduction.

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Rick Schibler

VP of Information Technology at Kentucky Trailer

Offers in-memory protection at a lower price than competitors

Morphisec's in-memory protection is probably the most valuable feature because it stops malicious activity from occurring. If something tries to install or act as a sleeper agent, Morphisec will detect and stop it. Morphisec's Moving Target Defense is critical to hardening our attack surface. If it detects something, it indicates whether it's valid. That means you've got a breach requiring investigation. It detects anomalies but doesn't necessarily point to what caused them. You still need to do that work. The solution is reasonably easy to administer. They made some changes last year, adding a cloud-based monitoring solution that makes deploying and monitoring our endpoints easy.

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MohammedJaffir

Founder at Cipheroot Cybersecurity Solutions

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"CSPM is currently the most used feature, and we are enjoying the new feature, FlexScan, which is valuable for Internet-facing VMs."

"I like the web API security and IoT scanning features the most. The user-friendly design of TotalCloud's interface enables customers to navigate it and use its full potential easily"

"If I had to say something positive about the product that brings me the biggest benefit, I would say it has accurate reports, gets new update CVEs, zero-day attack detection, and is easy to manage with its GUI."

"TotalCloud provides the easiest and the best approach for cloud infrastructure management."

"I appreciate Qualys TotalCloud's ability to onboard any type of device with ease, including containers."

"Its excellent graphical interface makes the scanning process simple."

"The scalability is good as well. I would rate it ten out of ten."

"My experience with using TruRisk to mitigate noise from raw CVEs has been extremely effective."

More Qualys TotalCloud pros

"It also provides full visibility into security events from Microsoft Defender and Morphisec in one dashboard. We've always had that capability with Morphisec. The more recent version appears to do that even a little bit more natively and it's given us visibility that we didn't have otherwise."

"Morphisec stops attacks without needing to know what type of threat it is, just that it is foreign. It is based on injections, so it would know when a software launches. If a software launches and something else also launches, then it would count that as anomalous and block it. Because the software looks at the code, and if it executes something else that is not related, then Morphisec would block it. That is how it works."

"Before we got Morphisec we evaluated solutions that claim to do similar things, and we have done additional evaluations since we started using it, but I don't think anything can truly touch what Morphisec does and the way it does it."

"Since using Morphisec we have seen a downturn in attacks because Morphisec protects us versus Defenders and whatnot that are signature-based. I know we have not had any issues with ransomware or other zero-day attacks that we've seen with machines that, all of a sudden, have become before we instituted the product. Now the machine had to be re-imaged and there was a loss of data because something was on the machine. You couldn't really determine what was on the machine because nothing was picking it up. The products we were using weren't picking it up."

"What's valuable is really the whole kit and caboodle of the Morphisec agent."

"Morphisec has given our security team's operations peace of mind and more time for patching."

"Morphisec makes it super easy for our IT team to prevent breaches of critical systems; it is a one-click install, then it takes care of the rest."

"The biggest feature is that it hides everything from your operating system that's running in-memory from anything to try to run against it. That's the most unique thing that's on the market. There's nothing else out there that's quite like that. That's a big selling point and why we went with it. It does exactly what the design does. If you can't find it, you can't execute against it."

More Morphisec pros

"I find the features that are most valuable are the policies that help us identify the vulnerabilities. These policies are then used for scanning instabilities and then identifying the particular vulnerabilities."

"If you are implementing it as part of an ongoing VA or retention operation, you should probably use Tenable."

"We looked at Tenable, Qualys and Rapid7. We found Tenable was the best of all three."

"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 equipment, and appliances in our infrastructure."

"User friendly and good dashboards."

"The support has been really cooperative."

"Overall, the solution is a better tool than Qualys."

"Out of the box, the product works well for us, so it's not a tool that we need to customize very much."

More Tenable Nessus pros

Cons

"In TotalCloud, I would suggest improvements in policy checks to cater to various inventory types like VPCs, subnets, S3 buckets, or IAMs. There is a lack of data segregation according to criticality or inventory."

"In terms of improvement, remediation still belongs to the cloud team, which is one of the issues we faced with Qualys TotalCloud."

"A feature improvement could be the inclusion of Windows OS support for container security, as it is currently only supported for Linux."

"Their customer support needs improvement."

"The onboarding process is a bit difficult. In the initial phase, it is very difficult to understand the features, what the dashboard contains, and what criteria they are using."

"The support process is inefficient due to the excessive number of replies required when submitting tickets."

"We encountered challenges identifying the correct resource category for certain items, such as those in containers or storage."

"The response part of the Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) module can be improved."

More Qualys TotalCloud cons

"In the Windows Defender integration, they have put in a report of computers that need Windows Defender updates. If those updates could be kicked off directly from the dashboard, instead of having to go to another system entirely, that would be good."

"It would be nice if they could integrate Morphisec with other traditional antivirus solutions beyond Microsoft Defender. That is probably my biggest gripe."

"The dashboard is the area that requires the most improvement. We have about, I would say 5,500 computers currently, and searching through all of those takes some time to filter. So as soon as you apply the filter, it takes a few seconds. It crunches, it thinks, and then it brings up the clients that match."

"We have discovered some bugs in the new releases that they've had to fix, so I would like to see more testing and QA on their side before they release."

"Some of the filters for the console need improvement. There are alerts that show up and just being able to acknowledge that we've seen those and not turn them off, but dismiss them, would be a huge benefit."

"The only area that really needs improvement is the reporting functionality."

"We have only had four attacks in the last year, "attacks" being some benign PDF from a vendor that, for some reason, were triggered. There were no actual attacks. They were just four false positives, or something lowly like adware. There have been false positives with both the on-premises solution and the cloud solution."

"If anything, tech support might be their weakest link."

More Morphisec cons

"Tenable Nessus could improve the reporting."

"The most that Tenable Nessus could improve is its speed because they might have put a lot of effort into compatibility issues that downgrade the speed."

"Nessus is not very good at identifying web application vulnerabilities, which means that we need to buy another product like Acunetix or EMC Networker to handle that part."

"They should improve the I/O reporting and the customized spreadsheet export feature."

"Technical support could be more knowledgeable. Their support right now goes from awkward to funny."

"There is very little to improve but cloud security tests would be something helpful to have."

"The professional version is not very scalable. It's not really scalable considering the number of assets and clients that I have."

"I think the reporting templates could be improved with Tenable Nessus."

More Tenable Nessus cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Qualys TotalCloud offers competitive pricing given its comprehensive suite of features, including integration, assessment, remediation, and detection capabilities, all within a single platform."

"It isn't cheap, but it's reasonable. It helps us to manage things with very few resources."

"The pricing is comparable. It is built into our other product, so I cannot piecemeal it. It is a part of our subscription."

"Its price seems higher compared to other tools, but it is worth it. If they could adjust the pricing and make it comparable with other tools, that would be great."

"The cost is high, but it meets our organizational needs."

"I am not sure about the pricing. From what I understand, it is a bit on the higher side, but I do not have the exact numbers."

"TotalCloud's price is about right where I would expect it to be."

"Qualys TotalCloud offers good pricing that is affordable and competitive with the market. Our partnership also provides us with additional benefits."

More Qualys TotalCloud pricing and cost advice

"Licenses are per endpoint, and that's true for the cloud version as well. The only difference is that there is a little extra charge for the cloud version."

"It is priced correctly for what it does. They end up doing a good deal of discounting, but I think it is priced appropriately."

"It is a little bit more expensive than other security products that we use, but it does provide us good protection. So, it is a trade-off."

"It does not have multi-tenants. If South Africa wants to show only the machines that they have, they need their own cloud incidence. It is not possible to have that in a single cloud incidence with multiple tenants in it, instead you need to have multiple cloud incidences. Then, if you have that, it will be more expensive. However, they are going to change that, which is good."

"We are still using a separate tool. I know for our 600 or I think we're actually licensed for up to 700 users, it runs me 23 or $24,000 a year. When you're talking to that many users plus servers being protected, that's well worth the investment for that dollar amount."

"The pricing is definitely fair for what it does."

"Morphisec is reasonably priced because our parent company's other subsidiaries use different products like CrowdStrike. CrowdStrike is four or five times more expensive than Morphisec. The competitive pricing saves us money in our overall security stack."

"It is an annual subscription basis per device. For the devices that we have in scope right now, it is about $25,000 a year."

More Morphisec pricing and cost advice

"Our organization is huge so our license costs $30,000."

"The price of Tenable Nessus could improve, it is expensive."

"We paid about six thousand dollars per license."

"Cost-wise, it's an affordable tool."

"The price is reasonable."

"It has a fair cost and very good cost-benefit ratio."

"This solution is affordable."

"The solution is expensive."

More Tenable Nessus pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Comms Service Provider

18%

Outsourcing Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Outsourcing Company

13%

Construction Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Outsourcing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	16
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	38

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	8

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	41
Midsize Enterprise	19
Large Enterprise	35

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Qualys TotalCloud?

We purchased Qualys TotalCloud for GCP and Azure as well. It is comparatively better than others regarding pricing. T...

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What needs improvement with Qualys TotalCloud?

I am unsure about how Qualys TotalCloud can be improved. I do not have anything else to add about the needed improvem...

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What is your primary use case for Qualys TotalCloud?

My main use case for Qualys TotalCloud is telemetry, although I am unsure about the specifics. A quick specific examp...

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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 ...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Tenable Nessus?

Based on my experience, the pricing for Tenable Nessus is somewhat higher, but customers still want to pay for it, so...

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Comparisons

Wiz vs Qualys TotalCloud

Compared 11% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Qualys TotalCloud

Compared 7% of the time

JupiterOne vs Qualys TotalCloud

Compared 6% of the time

Orca Security vs Qualys TotalCloud

Compared 6% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Qualys TotalCloud

Compared 5% of the time

More Qualys TotalCloud Competitors

Symantec Endpoint Security vs Morphisec

Compared 10% of the time

FortiCNAPP vs Morphisec

Compared 4% of the time

CrowdStrike Falcon vs Morphisec

Compared 4% of the time

Orca Security vs Morphisec

Compared 4% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Morphisec

Compared 4% of the time

More Morphisec Competitors

Qualys Exposure Management vs Tenable Nessus

Compared 5% of the time

Rapid7 InsightVM vs Tenable Nessus

Compared 5% of the time

Rapid7 Metasploit vs Tenable Nessus

Compared 4% of the time

Tenable Vulnerability Management vs Tenable Nessus

Compared 4% of the time

IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment vs Tenable Nessus

Compared 4% of the time

More Tenable Nessus Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Qualys TotalCloud

October 2026

Download Qualys TotalCloud product report

Buyer's Guide

Morphisec

October 2026

Download Morphisec product report

Buyer's Guide

Tenable Nessus

October 2026

Download Tenable Nessus product report

Also Known As

Qualys TotalCloud with FlexScan

Morphisec, Morphisec Moving Target Defense

No data available

Overview

Qualys TotalCloud enhances security posture across cloud environments with continuous monitoring, vulnerability management, and risk visualization, ensuring efficient threat assessment and automated remediation for improved cyber risk reduction.

Qualys TotalCloud offers a robust suite of security tools essential for organizations managing multi-cloud infrastructures. By integrating cloud accounts and automating workflows, it supports AWS, Azure, and GCP, offering comprehensive vulnerability management and zero-day detection. The platform's user-friendly design, combined with its extensive risk management and unified threat assessment capabilities, enables organizations to prioritize and remediate vulnerabilities effectively. TruRisk Insights provides clear insights on cyber risks, while the automation options streamline patch management and scanning processes. API integration across IaaS and SaaS environments further enhances resource allocation efficiency and saves time, addressing misconfigurations across cloud environments.

What are the most important features of Qualys TotalCloud?

Accurate Vulnerability Reports: Delivers precise and actionable insights for risk mitigation.
Zero-Day Detection: Identifies and addresses zero-day vulnerabilities proactively.
Unified Threat Assessment: Offers comprehensive evaluation of threats across the environment.
Extensive Risk Management: Manages risks effectively with advanced insights and prioritization.
Continuous Monitoring: Provides non-stop surveillance for vulnerabilities and threats.
Cloud-Native Automation: Streamlines processes and reduces manual efforts using automation.
FlexScan for Internet-Facing VMs: Scans external VMs efficiently to detect vulnerabilities.
Dashboard Risk Visualization: Clear visualization helps prioritize vulnerabilities.

What benefits and ROI should users look for?

Improved Security Posture: Enhances threat detection and response across clouds.
Time Savings: Automation reduces time spent on manual vulnerability management.
Resource Efficiency: Better allocation of resources through streamlined workflows.
Enhanced Risk Prioritization: Focus on critical vulnerabilities for effective mitigation.
Integrated Cloud Accounts: Facilitates seamless cloud management and security.

Qualys TotalCloud is deployed in sectors needing rigorous vulnerability management, such as finance and healthcare. Companies utilize it to secure multi-cloud environments like AWS, Azure, and GCP, focus on compliance, and integrate security into CI/CD pipelines to detect and remedy threats pre-deployment.

Qualys

Morphisec enhances security with its signatureless attack prevention, integrating smoothly with Microsoft Defender. Users benefit from real-time threat detection and seamless system integration, protecting against zero-day threats and ransomware across networks.

Morphisec's security solution focuses on preventing cyber threats without requiring threat signatures or user action. Its integration with Microsoft Defender offers simplified visibility and management while delivering quick responses. Lightweight in nature, Morphisec ensures zero performance degradation and employs in-memory protection along with Moving Target Defense. This approach effectively counters zero-day threats and ransomware, maintaining a user-centric dashboard that eases administrative workloads. Morphisec's easy deployment also enables small teams to manage risks and uphold robust security measures efficiently.

What are Morphisec's key features?

Signatureless Threat Prevention: Stops attacks without threat signatures or user interaction.
Microsoft Defender Integration: Provides unified management and quick response capabilities.
In-Memory Protection: Shields against zero-day and ransomware threats efficiently.
Moving Target Defense: Minimizes exposure to in-memory attacks.
User-Friendly Dashboard: Simplifies administration by reducing burdens.
Easy Deployment: Facilitates straightforward setup for small teams.

What benefits and ROI should be considered in user reviews?

Real-Time Detection: Immediate identification of threats enhances proactive threat management.
Seamless Integration: Compatible with existing systems, reducing delay risks.
Cloud-Based Updates: Ensures current protection with minimal manual input.
Multi-Layered Security: Adds a solid last defense layer, supplementing other antivirus solutions.

Morphisec is widely used across industries like financial services, healthcare, and manufacturing to bolster defenses against malware and ransomware. Its deployment spans workstations and servers, integrating efficiently into existing infrastructures. Industries value real-time threat detection, ease of deployment, and cloud-based updates, noting its ability to identify threats missed by other antivirus solutions.

Morphisec

Tenable Nessus enhances cybersecurity by detecting vulnerabilities with comprehensive scanning, user-friendly dashboards, and automated reporting, providing value in asset management, configuration audits, and compliance.

Providing real-time monitoring and ease of use, Nessus stands out with its integration capabilities, predictive prioritization, extensive plugin system, and cost-effectiveness. It supports vulnerability assessments for networks, applications, and devices, offering detailed reports for continuous security improvement. Nessus' capabilities extend across on-premise and cloud deployments, aiding compliance and remediation processes while aligning with security standards. While robust, it could benefit from enhanced cloud capabilities, improved scanning accuracy, and more flexible licensing options.

What are the standout features of Tenable Nessus?

Comprehensive Scanning: Covers platforms for in-depth vulnerability detection.
User-Friendly Dashboards: Simplifies monitoring with intuitive interfaces.
Automated Reporting: Streamlines data presentation and dissemination.
Integration Capabilities: Connects seamlessly with other tools for enhanced functionality.
Predictive Prioritization: Focuses on vulnerabilities with the greatest impact potential.

What benefits and ROI should users expect when evaluating Tenable Nessus in reviews?

Cost-Effectiveness: Provides strong value for investment in anomaly detection.
Real-Time Monitoring: Keeps security threats in check continuously.
Asset Management: Aids in tracking and securing organization-wide assets.
Detailed Reporting: Offers clear insights into compliance and security posture.

Tenable Nessus is implemented widely across industries for internal and external vulnerability assessments and management, aiding organizations in scanning servers, workstations, and network devices. Benefiting sectors prioritize security within their unique environments, leveraging Nessus for its thorough reports and compliance assurance.

Tenable

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Lenovo/Motorola, TruGreen, Covenant Health, Citizens Medical Center

Bitbrains, Tesla, Just Eat, Crosskey Banking Solutions, Covenant Health, Youngstown State University

Buyer's Guide

Morphisec vs. Tenable Nessus

September 2026

Free Report: Morphisec vs. Tenable Nessus

Find out what your peers are saying about Morphisec vs. Tenable Nessus and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.

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