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Pentera vs Tenable Nessus comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Pentera
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
14th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Penetration Testing Services (1st), Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS) (1st)
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 December 2024, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Pentera is 4.3%, up from 3.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tenable Nessus is 12.6%, down from 15.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vulnerability Management
 

Featured Reviews

Richard Marlow - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides good features and helps monitor the status of ransomware protection in an organization
The tool is quite scalable. There's a one-to-one relationship between the engine and how many scans we can do. We can only do one scan with one engine. We had some issues around the password assessments because we added a lot of users. It took a long time. I rate the scalability a seven out of ten. We have three users in our organization.
Matthew Weisler - PeerSpot reviewer
Unlimited assets for one price and quick, agentless results
The solution has a single price for unlimited assets. Value wise, the solution is also great for pen testers and consultants. The solution is useful for vulnerability and patch management from both the internal and public facing sides. Quick assessments, compliance scores, and results are provided without having to do agents.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The vulnerability scanner, exploit achievements, and remediation actions are all great."
"The tool showed us that our ransomware protection wasn’t working on some machines."
"The most valuable feature of Pentera is that you can do continuous vulnerability assessment, which is automated."
"The platform's most valuable features are credential management and vulnerability management."
"The product is easy to use."
"Maybe there are some remediation steps on the website, we can mask sensitive information on the website better."
"What I like the most about Pentera is its solution-oriented approach."
"The solution is SaaS-based. From a cloud perspective, it has Pentera Surface and Pentera Core. The Core is the on-prem deployed solution, while the Surface is the cloud-hosted solution that scans your public infrastructure. From the Surface perspective, the most valuable feature so far has been the attack surface mapping."
"The most valuable feature of Tenable Nessus is website scanning."
"It does exactly what you expect it to do, and its pricing is great. We couldn't really ask for a better deal."
"The scanning capabilities are most valuable when compared to Nessus."
"The solution is the most dynamic one I have seen thus far."
"Tenable Nessus is cheap and flexible."
"The most valuable feature of Tenable Nessus is the self-updating engine."
"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."
"We have done code scanning for a long period because as a company, we do DevOps as part of our development life cycle."
 

Cons

"Pentera's general dashboards could be improved and made more specific in terms of vulnerabilities that I'm discovering."
"One of the big issues we have is that the tool has an additional license for compromised credentials. Suppose compromised credentials for any of your domains appear in leaks, dumps, or are being sold. In that case, they try to aggregate that data and highlight that, for example, ten users appeared in recent dumps as compromised credentials. However, they don't provide much information about where those compromises came from or their source information, probably to protect their sources."
"Maybe scalability. I know that the Pentera right now is high level in order to scan big deals over 500 IPs and not less, and not less. That can be more granular. This will be useful."
"The automated penetration testing features must be improved."
"There is room for improvement in virtualization compatibility."
"The vulnerability scanner, exploit achievements, and remediation actions are all great."
"The price could be improved."
"One area for product improvement could be the inclusion of a dashboard to cover multiple branches and subsidiaries, allowing for centralized monitoring."
"The solution could improve by having better integration with different vendors' IPS solutions. The ACLs and IPS policies signatures should be enabled based on the results of Tenable Nessus automatically, we currently have to do it manually which is very time-consuming. It has done a good job integrating with Fortinet but we would like it to be better integrated with other solutions that we have."
"Scans aren't done properly and some devices aren't pinged."
"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."
"The product must be more comprehensive."
"Lacks some penetration testing-related services."
"You can scale Nessus to the extent that you can afford it. You need to have a license for every device you scan. As long as you can afford the increased costs, you won't have a problem scaling it."
"Tenable Nessus could improve the reporting."
"One significant drawback we encounter is the tool's tendency to flag patched packages incorrectly. For instance, if a package is patched by Debian maintainers but not updated to a major or minor version, Nessus may still flag it as vulnerable based on its database. This discrepancy leads to false alarms and requires our developers, system admins, and DevOps teams to address them."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's not that expensive, but it could be more cost-effective."
"The tool is relatively cheap."
"We have to pay a yearly licensing cost for Pentera."
"The product's cost is reasonable. I rate the pricing a three out of ten."
"The is a free version of Tenable Nessus available."
"Tenable Nessus is affordable."
"I rate the product's price seven or eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"It has a fair cost and very good cost-benefit ratio."
"We paid about six thousand dollars per license."
"We have a subscription, the licensing fees are paid yearly, and I am using the latest version."
"In general, it is extremely expensive."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
6%
Educational Organization
40%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pentera?
What I like the most about Pentera is its solution-oriented approach.
What needs improvement with Pentera?
One area for product improvement could be the inclusion of a dashboard to cover multiple branches and subsidiaries, allowing for centralized monitoring.
What is your primary use case for Pentera?
Our customers use the product to validate their security environment, ensuring that vulnerabilities within the network are identified and addressed.
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...
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Blackstone Group Caterpillar Apria Healthcare Taylor Vinters Sandler Capital Management Drawbridge BNP Paribas British Red Cross
Bitbrains, Tesla, Just Eat, Crosskey Banking Solutions, Covenant Health, Youngstown State University
Find out what your peers are saying about Pentera vs. Tenable Nessus and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
823,795 professionals have used our research since 2012.