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Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Tenable Nessus comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 5, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.2
Microsoft Defender for Cloud enhances security, reduces costs, and improves efficiency, offering proactive vulnerability identification and significant benefits.
Sentiment score
7.1
Tenable Nessus enhances security and threat management, improving visibility and preventing costly attacks, though ROI quantification is challenging.
Defender proactively indexes and analyzes documents, identifying potential threats even when inactive, enhancing preventative security.
Identifying potential vulnerabilities has helped us avoid costly data losses.
The biggest return on investment is the rapid improvement of security posture.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.6
Microsoft Defender for Cloud support varies in quality; enterprise users report better experiences, while others face inconsistencies and delays.
Sentiment score
7.9
Tenable Nessus customer service is responsive and effective, though complex issues occasionally face delays; overall satisfaction is high.
Since security is critical, we prefer a quicker response time.
The support team was very responsive to queries.
They understand their product, but much like us, they struggle with the finer details, especially with new features.
Whenever any issue arises, we contact the support, and they are always there for us.
The technical support is good yet could improve in terms of response time.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is scalable and flexible, integrates easily, but may have scalability and cost concerns at large scales.
Sentiment score
7.1
Tenable Nessus is scalable and adaptable, although large enterprises may face challenges with extensive data and cloud limitations.
We are using infrastructure as a code, so we do not have any scalability issues with Microsoft Defender for Cloud implementation because our cloud automatically does it.
Defender won't replace our endpoint XDR, but it will likely adapt and support any growth in the Microsoft Cloud space.
There might be scalability issues as you scale up to large enterprises.
Whether managing 50 servers today or 500 tomorrow, performance or capacity are not hindered.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is reliable with minor downtime and occasional portal or connectivity issues, praised for overall performance.
Sentiment score
8.1
Users praise Tenable Nessus's stability and reliability, with minimal issues that are easily resolved, making it highly dependable.
Defender's stability has been flawless for us.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is very stable.
Microsoft sometimes changes settings or configurations without transparency.
We have not encountered any issues with missing network items or errors in API and webhook interactions.
 

Room For Improvement

Microsoft Defender for Cloud users seek enhanced customization, better integration, improved dashboards, automation, and clearer pricing and documentation.
Tenable Nessus users seek improved reporting, UI, integration, vulnerability accuracy, and expanded coverage with better management, customization, and pricing.
Microsoft, in general, could significantly improve its communication and support.
The artificial intelligence features could be expanded to allow the system to autonomously manage security issues without needing intervention from admins.
I've heard there might be issues with scalability for larger enterprises.
The documentation is not well-organized, which can be confusing when searching for solutions or specific information related to Tenable Nessus Professional.
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides customizable pricing options, with debated cost-effectiveness, especially for extensive or regional deployments.
Tenable Nessus offers competitive pricing, appealing to smaller organizations, with pricing from $2,000 to $6,000 and no hidden fees.
Every time we consider expanding usage, we carefully evaluate the necessity due to cost concerns.
We appreciate the licensing approach based on employee count rather than a big enterprise license.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is pricey, especially for Kubernetes clusters.
Tenable Nessus's pricing is adequate if it is fully utilized.
 

Valuable Features

Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides enhanced security, AI-driven insights, multi-cloud support, and integrates with Sentinel for proactive threat management.
Tenable Nessus excels in comprehensive vulnerability management with automation, ease of integration, and cost-effective, customizable solutions.
The most valuable feature for me is the variety of APIs available.
This feature significantly aids in threat detection and enhances the user experience by streamlining security management.
The most valuable feature is the recommendations provided on how to improve security.
The scanning and reporting features are the most valuable aspects of Tenable Nessus.
The features I personally like include host discovery.
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
74
Ranking in other categories
Container Management (8th), Container Security (4th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (3rd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (3rd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (4th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd), Compliance Management (2nd)
Tenable Nessus
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
80
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 5.3%, up from 3.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tenable Nessus is 12.5%, down from 15.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vulnerability Management
 

Featured Reviews

Vibhor Goel - PeerSpot reviewer
A single tool for complete visibility and addressing security gaps
Currently, issues are structured in Microsoft Defender for Cloud at severity levels of high, critical, or warning, but these severity levels are not always right. For example, Microsoft might consider a port being open as critical, but that might not be the case for our company. Similarly, it might suggest closing some management ports, but you might need them to be able to log in, so the severity levels for certain things can be improved. Even though Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides a way to temporarily disable certain alerts or notifications without affecting our security score, it would be better to have more granularized control over these recommendations. Currently, we cannot even disable certain alerts or notifications. There should be an automated mechanism to design Azure policies based on the recommendations, possibly with AI integration. Instead of an engineer having to write a policy to fix security gaps, which is very time-consuming, there should be an inbuilt capability to auto-remediate everything and have proper control in place. Additionally, enabling Defender for Cloud at the resource group level, rather than only at the subscription level, would be beneficial.
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.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
41%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How is Prisma Cloud vs Azure Security Center for security?
Azure Security Center is very easy to use, integrates well, and gives very good visibility on what is happening across your ecosystem. It also has great remote workforce capabilities and supports a...
What do you like most about Microsoft Defender for Cloud?
The entire Defender Suite is tightly coupled, integrated, and collaborative.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Cloud?
The licensing is straightforward but can become expensive if you cover everything. You must balance the cost against the importance of what needs covering.
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

Microsoft Azure Security Center, Azure Security Center, Microsoft ASC, Azure Defender
No data available
 

Learn More

 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Defender for Cloud is trusted by companies such as ASOS, Vatenfall, SWC Technology Partners, and more.
Bitbrains, Tesla, Just Eat, Crosskey Banking Solutions, Covenant Health, Youngstown State University
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Tenable Nessus and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.