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Tenable Nessus pros and cons

Vendor: Tenable
4.2 out of 5
Badge Leader

Pros & Cons summary

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Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Tenable Nessus provides comprehensive vulnerability detection and management, integrating with patch management solutions to proactively address risks.
Tenable Nessus excels in scalability and performance, offering unlimited IP scans and extensive platform coverage.
Users appreciate Tenable Nessus for its cost-effectiveness and flexibility, making it a popular choice for vulnerability assessments.
Tenable Nessus is valued for its easy setup and straightforward deployment, allowing organizations to quickly implement and benefit from its features.
Tenable Nessus enhances security operations with frequent updates and reliable scanning options, including advanced scanning for various environments.

CONS

Tenable Nessus could improve its I/O reporting and customized spreadsheet export feature to enhance usability.
The pricing structure for Tenable Nessus is considered high, making it less cost-effective compared to options like OpenVAS.
Reporting capabilities in Tenable Nessus require enhancements, including better integration with other instances and more detailed dashboards.
There is a need for more accurate vulnerability assessment, as Tenable Nessus often produces false positives, causing extra work for users.
Tenable Nessus could offer a more flexible licensing model to accommodate both cloud and on-premises usage simultaneously.
 

Tenable Nessus Pros review quotes

AK
IT Manager at Medmen
Aug 29, 2018
It provides multiple recommendations towards the remedy of vulnerabilities.
LS
Managing partner at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Oct 24, 2018
We looked at Tenable, Qualys and Rapid7. We found Tenable was the best of all three.
TK
Senior Consultant at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Oct 28, 2018
Tenable Nessus streamlines the process of scanning for our organization.
Learn what your peers think about Tenable Nessus. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2026.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.
KS
Security Professional at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Jan 10, 2019
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.
SD
Senior Infrastructure Project Manager at a energy/utilities company with 501-1,000 employees
Sep 8, 2019
The solution is very stable.
JK
Senior Systems Administrator at Government Scientific Source, Inc.
Nov 7, 2019
The most valuable feature is how it scanned and detected through its database to let us know exactly what fixes we needed to put in place for the vulnerabilities. It detects and it also gives you the way to fix it.
reviewer1229910 - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Architect at a logistics company with 10,001+ employees
Nov 13, 2019
The most valuable feature is the breadth of vulnerabilities that it finds. It's able to find across a lot of different platforms and operating systems. It's also able to combine local testing with network-based testing.
KC
President and Sr CISO Consultant at Micro Strategies
Nov 14, 2019
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.
it_user885369 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Security Engineer at a construction company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Nov 26, 2019
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.
reviewer1239462 - PeerSpot reviewer
CISO at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
Nov 27, 2019
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.
 

Tenable Nessus Cons review quotes

AK
IT Manager at Medmen
Aug 29, 2018
They should improve the I/O reporting and the customized spreadsheet export feature.
LS
Managing partner at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Oct 24, 2018
From my point of view the solution basically is not for the big enterprise.
TK
Senior Consultant at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Oct 28, 2018
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.
Learn what your peers think about Tenable Nessus. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2026.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.
KS
Security Professional at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Jan 10, 2019
We have had some false positives in the past, which we hope can improve in the future.
SD
Senior Infrastructure Project Manager at a energy/utilities company with 501-1,000 employees
Sep 8, 2019
I would like to see an improvement in the ranking of high, medium and low vulnerability.
JK
Senior Systems Administrator at Government Scientific Source, Inc.
Nov 7, 2019
There is room, overall, for improvement in the way it groups the workstations and the way it detects, when the vulnerability is scanned. Even when we would run a new scan, if it was an already existing vulnerability, it wouldn't put a new date on it.
reviewer1229910 - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Architect at a logistics company with 10,001+ employees
Nov 13, 2019
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.
KC
President and Sr CISO Consultant at Micro Strategies
Nov 14, 2019
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.
it_user885369 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Security Engineer at a construction company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Nov 26, 2019
We use credentialed scans. They need more permissions and more changes or settings on Windows and Linux.
reviewer1239462 - PeerSpot reviewer
CISO at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
Nov 27, 2019
One area that has room for improvement is the reporting. I'm preparing reports for Windows and Linux machines, etc. Currently, I'm collecting three or four reports and turning them into one report. I don't know if it is possible to combine all of them in one report, but that would be helpful.