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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 (19th)
Tenable Nessus
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
87
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 2.7%, up 2.0% compared to last year.
Tenable Nessus, on the other hand, focuses on Vulnerability Management, holds 5.1% mindshare, down 10.3% since last year.
Risk-Based Vulnerability Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cisco Vulnerability Management (formerly Kenna.VM)2.7%
Qualys VMDR12.5%
Rapid7 InsightVM10.8%
Other74.0%
Risk-Based Vulnerability Management
Vulnerability Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Tenable Nessus5.1%
Wiz6.6%
Qualys VMDR5.0%
Other83.3%
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."
"Tenable Nessus is cheap and flexible."
"The vulnerability scanner is the most valuable feature."
"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 plug-in text information is quite useful."
"The value that Tenable Nessus brings to my company is significant because we can see risks; it is also good to see the pages risk and system risks, and it saves money."
"It's scalable."
"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."
"The ease of use is the primary valuable feature. This specific version is very straightforward. I like the ability to modify it and configure it based on the different policies."
 

Cons

"An improvement would be some sort of an integration with any GRC suite."
"They could make their reporting a little better."
"Multiple steps to create an actionable plan will be a great addition to Nessus."
"Tenable Nessus could include a broader range of IT assets."
"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."
"Model OS costs (and its segregation schema for individual modules)."
"The user interface of Tenable Nessus feels outdated and could be more user-friendly."
"The features are limited when it comes to scanning network devices for vulnerabilities."
"From my point of view the solution basically is not for the big enterprise."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I think the pricing is based on the number of endpoints, so it's more subscription-based."
"Tenable Nessus needs to be licensed. We own a license for the security center and that license is charged by the number of IP addresses that you can scan. You're allowed to have as many scanners as you want and there's no license for the number of scanners. We have a bunch of Nessus scanners out there, and as long as we're comfortable with staying under that IP address limit, that's really all we have to be concerned about."
"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."
"In general, it is extremely expensive."
"The solution has a single price for unlimited assets."
"We paid about six thousand dollars per license."
"The price is reasonable."
"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."
"Cost-wise, it's an affordable tool."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Retailer
14%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business39
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: January 2026.
881,665 professionals have used our research since 2012.