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Skybox Security Suite vs Tenable Nessus comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 1, 2025

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
Sponsored
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
18th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
8.2
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) (2nd)
Skybox Security Suite
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
30th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
Firewall Security Management (6th)
Tenable Nessus
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
81
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Zafran Security is 0.8%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Skybox Security Suite is 0.6%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tenable Nessus is 8.8%, down from 13.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vulnerability Management
 

Featured Reviews

Israel Cavazos Landini - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
NenadMijatovic - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient in vulnerability management, stable and easy to use
Vulnerability management is the most valuable feature because it lets you focus on the most critical vulnerabilities. That's the important thing. Here in Serbia, there are not so many companies that have too many firewalls inside one company. So, they usually don't buy this model for Firewall Assurance unless there is some compliance. So you can prove that your firewalls are compliant. So, that model is not so important here in Serbia. It's for bigger companies. So, they usually buy network assurance to build the model of the network and vulnerability management to focus on the most important vulnerabilities. Moreover, Skybox can collect data for many vendors. From the endpoint protection vendors to the network equipment vendors to other security vendors. So, it supports more than one hundred vendors to collect data from them.
HarshBhardiya - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We are able to see the real risk of a vulnerability on our environment with our security tools."
"We saw benefits from Zafran Security almost immediately after deploying it."
"Overall, we have seen about eighty-seven percent reduction of the number of vulnerabilities that require urgency to remediate, specifically the number of criticals."
"Zafran is an excellent tool."
"Zafran has become an indispensable tool in our cybersecurity arsenal."
"The most impressive feature is optimization and clean-up."
"Security review is the most important feature, because it offers a single pane of glass to analyze multiple firewalls."
"The most valuable features are the rule compliance and the OS vulnerability checks."
"This type of tool does a great job of reaching into those other devices producing risk recommendations, compliance recommendations, and a single plane of glass to do your queries, so you can find where these rules might exist."
"Skybox Security Suite was a very good tool for my organization."
"The solution's most valuable and unique assets are the vulnerability management and change management solutions because they identify mistakes in the network before implementation which reduces risks."
"The port division management was the solution's most valuable aspect for our organization."
"It has a good policy management feature and can provide customers with good quality outputs."
"The product's most valuable features are vulnerability and asset management. It can define the rules and validate the configuration."
"The most valuable feature is the installation of Tenable which is incredibly easy."
"The most valuable feature of Tenable Nessus is the GUI and user-friendliness. Additionally, the environment is easy to work with."
"Ease of reviewing scores, identifying vulnerabilities, and getting information on them."
"It allows me to prioritize efforts and utilize effective technical resources."
"The automatic scanner and scheduler are pretty cool."
"Nessus' most valuable feature is vulnerability management because it helps to discover vulnerabilities proactively and integrates with patch management solutions so you can push patches."
"The most valuable feature of Tenable Nessus is the dashboard. They are convenient to use."
 

Cons

"The dashboarding and reporting functionality of Zafran Security is an area that definitely could use some improvements."
"I think the ability to have some enhanced reporting capabilities is something they can improve on, as they have good reports but we have asked for some specific reporting enhancements."
"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 most recent update was not tested with all of the vendors before it was released, so some of the features are misbehaving."
"Change Manager can be improved. If they can improve Change Manager so that whatever we want to do on a firewall, we are able to do it through Change Manager, it will be helpful for us. Whenever we are doing a change, it only does them at an L3 and L4 level, but all the firewalls are at the application layer. So, whatever needs to be done on the firewall, we aren't able to get it done through Change Manager. Currently, this functionality is not there because of which we are sometimes losing customers. I can create a role on Layer 3, Layer 4, but when it comes to the application layer, such as configuring and defining URLs or other things at the application level, it can't be done through Change Manager. Customers demand that they should be able to do everything through Change Manager. They don't want to do it through some other mechanism to accomplish their complete change management policy. They don't want to use a firewall manager because sometimes, they don't have any manager. They ask if they can use our solution so that a manager is not required. If Change Manager can do all the management automatically without involving any other manager, it will be great. They can also provide better integration with other managers so that everything can be done through a central point."
"There are multiple dashboards but no custom dashboard. It would be good to include a custom dashboard so that we can actually choose which field and what kinds of things we want to look at."
"The vendor's support is terrible."
"The initial setup with Skybox Security is hard. You need one or two strong security engineers on your team."
"The dashboard's UI is not interesting; it is quite normal. It would be better if something more attractive or similar useful information found in AlgoSec was available."
"It's expensive."
"The solution needs improvement in firewall configuration checks. I would also like to see more configuration checks for Forcepoint and for other non-supported firewalls."
"They could make their reporting a little better."
"The solution could improve security updates."
"From my point of view the solution basically is not for the big enterprise."
"Online learning could be a bit better."
"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."
"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."
"The pricing point has increased significantly in recent years. The product's pricing has roughly tripled within the last couple of years, making us reconsider renewing the license for the scanner."
"The reporting could be improved. The reporting in Rapid7 is much better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Skybox comes with extra licenses and has a change management license. The licenses are expensive, but they come with extra value."
"I think the price is fair."
"The price of the Skybox Security Suite can be expensive."
"With licensing, the number of network nodes becomes very expensive to the point where you have to rationalize if the tools are warranted anymore."
"It's expensive."
"I rate the pricing two on a scale of one to ten, where one is very expensive, and ten is cost-effective."
"When compared with other companies, the license is more costly."
"Fully understand the total cost of ownership. They have gone to a new model where you have to replace the hardware every X amount of years at a very substantial cost and fully understand your intended number of nodes. To operate a firewall, you have to pay two licenses, a firewall node and a network node. If you are a reasonable-sized organization, this gets expensive very quickly."
"We incurred a single cost for a perpetual license, although I cannot comment on the price as this is above my management level."
"The product pricing is dynamic and varies based on the specific needs of each project and customer."
"The price is high for the solution. There are free tools with similar functionality available. The solution cost approximately $3,500."
"Its price is high for Libya. The companies here in Libya don't have the awareness of and a good budget for cybersecurity services. If you want them to go for a product, you need to provide something different. This differentiation is related to the price. They should give about 40% to 45% discount per person on the current cost."
"When comparing the price of Tenable Nessus to other similar solutions, such as Acunetix, Tenable Nessus is not as expensive. It is averagely priced in the market. We pay for the solution annually."
"The solution has free options."
"The solution has a single price for unlimited assets."
"The price is reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Energy/Utilities Company
6%
Educational Organization
19%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
 

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?
The current pricing of Zafran Security is fair overall. They were good to work with to accommodate our organization w...
What needs improvement with Zafran Security?
The dashboarding and reporting functionality of Zafran Security is an area that definitely could use some improvement...
What is your primary use case for Zafran Security?
Zafran Security is helping reduce the amount of critical vulnerabilities in our environments that require prompt reme...
What do you like most about Skybox Security Suite?
Overall, the tool has helped us reduce risks. If any step is missing, it's easier for my team or engineers to identif...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Skybox Security Suite?
From a commercial perspective, AlgoSec is more expensive compared to Skybox Security Suite. Skybox Security Suite is ...
What needs improvement with Skybox Security Suite?
The dashboard's UI is not interesting; it is quite normal. It would be better if something more attractive or similar...
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...
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 ...
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...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
ADP, Blue Cross Blue Shield, BT, USAID, Delta Dental, EDF Energy, EMC, HSBC, Johnson & Johnson
Bitbrains, Tesla, Just Eat, Crosskey Banking Solutions, Covenant Health, Youngstown State University
Find out what your peers are saying about Skybox Security Suite vs. Tenable Nessus and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.