Orca Security vs Tenable Nessus comparison

Orca Security and Tenable are both solutions in the Vulnerability Management category. Orca Security is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.6, while Tenable is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.2. Orca Security holds a 4.6% mindshare in VM, compared to Tenable’s 9.8% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Orca Security users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 98% of Tenable users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Tenable Nessus and Orca Security compete in the cybersecurity tools category. Orca Security seems to have the upper hand due to its agentless architecture, cloud focus, and rapid support.

Features: Tenable Nessus offers extensive vulnerability scanning, predictive prioritization, and an integration ability that supports risk management across environments. Orca Security's SideScanning technology allows agentless data collection, ranking and prioritizing vulnerabilities, and providing detailed cloud-level visibility.

Room for Improvement: Tenable Nessus could improve in reporting customization, intuitive interfaces, and reducing false positives. Orca Security could expand its on-premise integration and visualization capabilities, automatic remediation features, and enhance communication on updates.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Tenable Nessus is mostly deployed on-premises, and feedback on technical support is mixed. Orca Security is deployed in the cloud with minimal setup and is praised for ease of use and quick support response.

Pricing and ROI: Tenable Nessus is competitively priced for smaller organizations and presents a strong ROI through its management capabilities. Orca Security is generally more expensive but justifies cost with its feature suite and value in reducing the need for multiple tools.

To learn more, read our detailed Orca Security vs. Tenable Nessus Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Orca Security vs. Tenable Nessus

April 2025

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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

Zafran Security

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Zafran Security is 0.6%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Orca Security is 4.6%, down from 5.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tenable Nessus is 9.8%, down from 13.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Vulnerability Management

Featured Reviews

Israel Cavazos Landini

Associate Director IT Security Operations at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees

Weekly insights and risk analysis facilitate informed security decisions

I appreciate the weekly insights Zafran provides, which include critical topics for networks and IT security, allowing us to evaluate which insights apply to our environment. The organization score feature is valuable to keep the leadership team updated on how our infrastructure fares security-wise. The applicable risk level versus base risk level feature is beneficial because prior to Zafran, we only used the base risk level, but now understand that risk depends on the asset itself. Zafran is an excellent tool.

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CHINTAN MEHTA

Cloud Security Automation Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Consolidating security tools with comprehensive cloud visibility

The documentation for Orca Security could be improved. The compliance framework also needs enhancements, especially concerning integrations with other tools like ServiceNow's vulnerability modules, which are not as mature as expected. It should also increase its capability to ingest data from other security tools like CloudSight for endpoint detection and provide real-time monitoring.

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HarshBhardiya

SOC Engineer at Just Dial Limited

Provided increased visibility across the organization's servers

The user interface of Tenable Nessus feels outdated and could be more user-friendly. Additionally, the documentation is not well-organized, which can be confusing when searching for solutions or specific information related to Tenable Nessus Professional. The reporting feature could be improved by allowing users to create their own templates instead of relying on predefined ones.

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

"Zafran is an excellent tool."

"We are able to see the real risk of a vulnerability on our environment with our security tools."

"Zafran has become an indispensable tool in our cybersecurity arsenal."

"Overall, we have seen about eighty-seven percent reduction of the number of vulnerabilities that require urgency to remediate, specifically the number of criticals."

"One of the valuable features of Orca Security is its design and options that allow flexible filtering and user-friendly visualization."

"The most valuable feature of Orca Security is the automated scanning tool, user-friendliness, and ease of use."

"The GUI features are very good. Threat intelligence is also very good."

"The best features of Orca Security include its ability to perform a lot of security controls without requiring any installation of agents, making it very easy to set up."

"The visibility Orca provides into my environment is at the highest level... When I dropped them into the environment, from the very get-go I had more insight into the risks in my environment than I had had during the entire two and a half years I had been here."

"Orca's platform provides an agentless data collection facility that collects information directly from the cloud using APIs, with zero impact on performance."

"The vulnerability management does not require network scanning or agent technology, so I don't need to modify any of my products in order to do vulnerability assessments."

"Orca's SideScanning is the biggest feature. It's the 'wow' factor... With Orca's SideScanning, they just need permissions for your account and that makes it so simple."

More Orca Security pros

"The most valuable feature of Tenable Nessus is the GUI and user-friendliness. Additionally, the environment is easy to work with."

"The solution is very stable."

"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."

"The solution is easy to understand for users because instructions are included on the platform."

"Tenable Nessus streamlines the process of scanning for our organization."

"The solution can scale well."

"The initial setup is very straightforward."

"Overall Zoom is a good solution."

More Tenable Nessus pros

Cons

"Initially, we were somewhat concerned about the scalability of Zafran due to our large asset count and the substantial amount of information we needed to process."

"The dashboarding and reporting functionality of Zafran Security is an area that definitely could use some improvements."

"The main drawback in an agentless approach is that if the solution detects a virus or malware in the environment, we need to manually remove it. But from my experience with other production environments, it's not straightforward to install agents in the hope they will automatically remediate viruses, even from production environments... Ultimately, the ability to auto-remediate is something that I would like to see."

"Orca Security could improve its ticket creation process."

"Orca needs improvement in snoozing or dismissing specific alarms."

"Orca needs improvement in snoozing or dismissing specific alarms. Currently, snoozing dismisses all future vulnerabilities related to a CVE."

"Orca Security can be improved as there should be some kind of central pane of glass. Similar to how cloud management works, Orca Security should have something comparable."

"In the future, I'd like to see Orca work better with third-party vendors. Specifically, being able to provide sanitized results from third parties."

"I would be happy if they offered more automatic remediation options. They're working on that, but the more the better. For example, if they want you to harden a server, they would offer a hardening script that would be more aware of what's going on."

"The presentation of the data in the dashboard is a little bit chaotic."

More Orca Security cons

"Tenable Nessus application device assessment is one of the top tools. However, in the application security assessment, there are other tools that provide better, and more accurate findings."

"This is still a maturing product. Tenable is only a scanner for one ability, while other solutions like Rapid7 have more tools for verification. We still have to manually verify to see if the vulnerability is a false positive or not."

"Sometimes, the categorization for clients was tricky at first, however, they eventually got used to it."

"The professional version is not very scalable."

"We would like to have the option of using the solution for the cloud as well as on-premises with the same license at the same time. That would be very helpful."

"Pricing is one of the most important features, and it is something that they can improve on."

"From my point of view the solution basically is not for the big enterprise."

"Remediation needs improvement."

More Tenable Nessus cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"While it's competitive with Palo Alto Prisma, I think Orca's list price is very high. I would advise Orca to lower it because, at that price, I might consider alternatives like Wiz, which also offers agentless services."

"We have a total of 25 licenses for this solution. The solution is on a pay-and-you-use model."

"The price is a bit expensive for smaller organizations."

"Orca Security charges are based on cloud workloads. So, it's based on workloads. If we look at one feature, it might be expensive."

"I think their pricing model is aligned with market demand. Of course, Orca could probably better align their pricing model with the needs of smaller businesses as well as some larger-scale enterprises with millions of assets. But in all fairness, I think the Orca sales team has been accommodating and ensured that we're happy with the pricing."

"Its license is a bit expensive."

"The most expensive solution is Palo Alto. They claim to be very robust. The next most expensive is Wiz, followed by Orca and all the rest."

"Orca Security is cheaper compared to other solutions in the same space."

More Orca Security pricing and cost advice

"We have a subscription, the licensing fees are paid yearly, and I am using the latest version."

"The price of Tenable Nessus is too expensive for each service center."

"The price of the solution is reasonable."

"The solution has a single price for unlimited assets."

"The price of Tenable Nessus is much more competitive versus other solutions on the market."

"Its pricing is great and can't be improved. It is very cheap. It is less than 2,000 pounds a license, and you can't really ask for more. It has unlimited IPs and unlimited scans. There are no particular pricing constraints. The only additional cost is the inherent cost of the people to actually review the actual scans."

"The solution is expensive."

"Nessus Manager is not an expensive product. It has its limitations, but the pricing reflects that. We have a yearly subscription."

More Tenable Nessus pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

University

Educational Organization

34%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zafran Security?

I find that the pricing for Zafran aligns well with the comprehensive features it offers. The asset and user-based li...

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What needs improvement with Zafran Security?

Zafran is a new startup. Features are continuously being added or improved. 1) Continued integrations with existing (...

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What is your primary use case for Zafran Security?

We connect this to our vulnerability scanner as input, our security tools to better determine risk, and our change ma...

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What do you like most about Orca Security?

It's for protection. It's an agentless tool. We don't need to install anything at a customer's premises. We can just ...

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What needs improvement with Orca Security?

Orca Security can be improved as there should be some kind of central pane of glass. Similar to how cloud management ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Orca Security?

Our clients use Orca Security for various reasons. We implement it for the clients.

See all answers

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. Yo...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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 addre...

See all answers

Comparisons

Wiz Code vs Zafran Security

Compared 51% of the time

Vulcan Cyber vs Zafran Security

Compared 20% of the time

ServiceNow Security Operations vs Zafran Security

Compared 12% of the time

Tenable Vulnerability Management vs Zafran Security

Compared 10% of the time

Armis vs Zafran Security

Compared 7% of the time

More Zafran Security Competitors

Wiz vs Orca Security

Compared 36% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Orca Security

Compared 9% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Orca Security

Compared 6% of the time

CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security vs Orca Security

Compared 5% of the time

AWS Security Hub vs Orca Security

Compared 4% of the time

More Orca Security Competitors

Qualys VMDR vs Tenable Nessus

Compared 14% of the time

Tenable Vulnerability Management vs Tenable Nessus

Compared 13% of the time

Rapid7 InsightVM vs Tenable Nessus

Compared 11% of the time

Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management vs Tenable Nessus

Compared 9% of the time

Pentera vs Tenable Nessus

Compared 7% of the time

More Tenable Nessus Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM)

May 2025

Download Zafran Security product report

Buyer's Guide

Orca Security

March 2025

Download Orca Security product report

Buyer's Guide

Tenable Nessus

April 2025

Download Tenable Nessus product report

Overview

Zafran Security integrates with existing security tools to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities effectively, proving that most critical vulnerabilities are not exploitable, optimizing threat management.

Zafran Security introduces an innovative operating model for managing security threats and vulnerabilities. By leveraging the threat exposure management platform, it pinpoints and prioritizes exploitable vulnerabilities, reducing risk through immediate remediation. This platform enhances your hybrid cloud security by normalizing vulnerability signals and integrating specific IT context data, such as CVE runtime presence and internet asset reachability, into its analysis. No longer reliant on patch windows, Zafran Security allows you to manage risks actively.

What are the key features of Zafran Security?

Threat Exposure Management: Utilizes existing tools to prioritize vulnerabilities and manage threats.
Integrative Analysis: Combines security data with IT context for precise vulnerability management.
Real-time Risk Reduction: Enables immediate risk management without waiting for patches.
Hybrid Cloud Compatibility: Functions across diverse cloud environments for comprehensive security.

What benefits can users expect from Zafran Security?

Improved Security: Enhances protection by efficiently identifying and mitigating risks.
Cost Efficiency: Reduces unnecessary patching expenses by confirming non-exploitable vulnerabilities.
Time Savings: Frees developers to focus on root causes by handling immediate threats.
Comprehensive Insight: Offers a holistic view of security threats and vulnerabilities.

In industries where security is paramount, such as finance and healthcare, Zafran Security provides invaluable protection by ensuring that only exploitable vulnerabilities are addressed. It allows entities to maintain robust security measures while allocating resources efficiently, fitting seamlessly into existing security strategies.

Zafran Security

Orca Security is the pioneer of agentless cloud security that is trusted by hundreds of enterprises globally. Orca makes cloud security possible for enterprises moving to and scaling in the cloud with its patented SideScanning™ technology and Unified Data Model. The Orca Cloud Security Platform delivers the world's most comprehensive coverage and visibility of risks across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud and Kubernetes.

At Orca Security, we’re on a mission to make it fast, easy, and cost effective for organizations to address critical cloud security issues so they can operate in the cloud with confidence.

Key Platform Features:

Agentless: Complete, centralized coverage of the entire cloud estate, without the need for installing and configuring agents or layering together multiple siloed tools. Full visibility of cloud misconfigurations, vulnerabilities, workload protection, malware scanning, image scanning, file integrity monitoring and more.
Asset Inventory: Get a complete inventory of all your public cloud assets, including detailed information on installed OSes, software, and applications, as well as data and network assets such as storage buckets, Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs), and Security Groups.

Attack Path Analysis: Visualize attack vectors to critical assets or crown jewels. See which assets are susceptible to lateral movement, assume roles, privilege escalation, and more.

Risk Prioritization: Prioritize the 1% of risks that matter the most, based on impact scores. Secure the vulnerabilities and misconfigured targets (critical assets) and eliminate the potential risks residing on the attack paths to those targets.
Cloud Threat Detection: Monitor for malicious activity within your entire cloud estate. Be aware of detected threats, user behavior anomalies and more.

Breach Forensics: Log every change and all activity into a central repository for investigation procedures to confirm or deny entry and compromises within the cloud estate.
Cloud To Dev (Shift Left): Orca’s built-in shift left capabilities enables DevOps to focus more security attention earlier in the CI/CD pipelines. Security teams are able to trace a production risk (misconfiguration or vulnerability) directly to the original source code repository from which it came, even down to the exact line of code that is at the root of the identified risk.
Compliance: Choose from over 60 preconfigured compliance frameworks, cloud security best practices, CIS Benchmarks, or design and build your own compliance framework for fast and continuous reporting.
Security Score: The Orca Security Score is found on Orca’s Risk Dashboard and is updated daily. The overall score is calculated based on performance in the following five categories - Suspicious Activity, IAM, Data at Risk, Vulnerable Assets, and Responsiveness. Since the scores are percentage based and not raw numbers, you can objectively make comparisons to other organizations within your industry or business units of different sizes. In addition to reporting to senior management, the Orca Security Score can help with internal self-monitoring, as a way of measuring risk mitigation efforts, to know where to focus efforts, and track progress.

Orca Security Benefits

Consolidate technologies to reduce costs and complexity:

“The more I can get out of this one solution, the better. I see Orca as the tool where we get all cloud-related security data.” - Joshua Scott, Head of Security and IT | Postman

Avoid costly breaches:

"I look at proactive asset discovery, configuration management, and vulnerability management as being able to find a vulnerability before the bad guys do and being able to deal with it before something exploits it. This is what Orca does for us." - Doug Graham, CSO & CPO | Lionbridge

Increase team productivity and efficiency by focusing on high-value activities and solving the 1% of risks that matter most:

"Orca is unique in that it locates vulnerabilities with precision and delivers tangible, actionable results – without having to sift through all the noise." - Aaron Brown, Senior Cloud Security Engineer | Sisense

Quick Time-to-Value with Immediate ROI:

"Orca told us we could have some visibility within 5 or 10 minutes, and I thought, ‘There’s no way.’ Well, I was wrong. They really did it." - Thomas Hill, CISO | Live Oak Bank

Reduce MTTR and remove operational friction:

“We can’t ask developers things like ‘Did you think about security? When you start a new VM on AWS, can you please let me know so I’m able to scan it? Can you please deploy an agent on that machine for me?’ We need a better way to work. Orca provides that better way by eliminating organizational friction.” - Erwin Geirnaert, Cloud Security Architect | NG Data

Orca Security

Tenable Nessus provides an efficient vulnerability management system with swift deployment and comprehensive scanning capabilities, making it an ideal choice for organizations seeking to enhance their security posture through effective threat detection and mitigation strategies.

Renowned for its top-tier vulnerability detection, Tenable Nessus offers a robust platform that integrates effortlessly across systems, enhancing threat management through automation, real-time monitoring, and customizable scanning options. Its broad asset coverage, including network devices and applications, coupled with ease of deployment, positions it as a go-to option for risk assessment and compliance. Organizations value its extensive reporting features and database, although they suggest enhancements in reporting formats and false positive detection. A more intuitive interface, improved cloud support, and competitive pricing models are sought after to cater to evolving enterprise needs.

What are the key features of Tenable Nessus?

Comprehensive Vulnerability Detection: Identifies security gaps across systems and platforms.
Remedy Recommendations: Provides actionable insights for vulnerability fixes.
Predictive Prioritization: Helps in focusing on critical vulnerabilities first.
Seamless Integration: Compatible with diverse platforms for cohesive threat management.
Automation Capabilities: Streamlines routine scans and reports.

What benefits and ROI should users look for?

Fast Setup: Quick deployment that saves time and resources.
Cost-Effective: Affordable pricing supports budget-conscious cyber strategies.
Real-Time Monitoring: Offers continuous oversight of system health.
Extensive Reports: Detailed insights enhance decision-making processes.

In industries such as finance, healthcare, and tech, Tenable Nessus is implemented for scanning internal and external networks, identifying risks, and ensuring data protection compliance. Organizations conduct regular scans to detect security vulnerabilities in servers and databases, leveraging its capabilities to strengthen their security frameworks while managing cloud infrastructures and enterprise networks efficiently.

Tenable

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

BeyondTrust, Postman, Digital Turbine, Solarisbank, Lemonade, C6 Bank, Docebo, Vercel, and Vivino

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

Buyer's Guide

Orca Security vs. Tenable Nessus

April 2025

Free Report: Orca Security vs. Tenable Nessus

Find out what your peers are saying about Orca Security vs. Tenable Nessus and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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