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RiskIQ Illuminate 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

RiskIQ Illuminate
Average Rating
0.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Attack Surface Management (ASM) (31st)
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. RiskIQ Illuminate is designed for Attack Surface Management (ASM) and holds a mindshare of 0.9%, up 0.3% compared to last year.
Tenable Nessus, on the other hand, focuses on Vulnerability Management, holds 5.2% mindshare, down 10.3% since last year.
Attack Surface Management (ASM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
RiskIQ Illuminate0.9%
CrowdStrike Falcon7.9%
Darktrace5.3%
Other85.9%
Attack Surface Management (ASM)
Vulnerability Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Tenable Nessus5.2%
Wiz7.5%
Qualys VMDR5.0%
Other82.3%
Vulnerability Management
 

Featured Reviews

SimonClark - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber Security Advisor - Director at Fort Net UK
Able to discover unpatched servers, offers good stability, and scales very well
A low-cost service to evaluate the risk score of a supply chain would be very helpful. This could be useful for insurance companies offering cyber insurance to enterprise customers, providing the insurer with a valuable way to unobtrusively, quickly, and frequently assess their customers and apply appropriate premiums for the level of risk. This would also be useful for enterprises. They could, for example, assess companies prior to a merger or acquisition. What would also be useful for any enterprise would be if their supply chain has some kind of direct digital access to parts of their network.
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 solution is stable with 12 years of established historical data."
"Security is the key number because it can start to scan with a few clicks instead of credits, which is a bit complicated. So simplicity is the first advantage. Then the generated reports are well done and easy to present to management. The quality of the scan is quite good in detecting the severity. The solution has simplicity. Also, it has frequent updates so that is also a valuable feature."
"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 equipment, and appliances in our infrastructure."
"The best features of Tenable Nessus include its compatibility with other applications such as SIEM and other apps, allowing Tenable Nessus to work smoothly with them."
"The most valuable feature of Tenable Nessus is real-time monitoring."
"With the Tenable Nessus enterprise edition, you have unlimited licenses to scan the device."
"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."
"Overall Zoom is a good solution."
"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."
 

Cons

"A low-cost service to evaluate the risk score of a supply chain would be very helpful."
"We use credentialed scans. They need more permissions and more changes or settings on Windows and Linux."
"The interface is a little bit clunky, and the reporting is not marvelous. There should be better integration of reporting between instances. Currently, the instance stands alone, and it produces a report. Being able to amalgamate those reports with another instance will be useful."
"Lacks some penetration testing-related services."
"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 solution could improve security updates."
"The price could be reduced."
"I think the reporting templates could be improved with Tenable Nessus."
"EQA's and dashboards should be addressed in the next release."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The pricing is much more manageable versus other products."
"The product is free."
"Cost-wise, it's an affordable tool."
"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."
"The price of Tenable Nessus is too expensive for each service center."
"This solution is affordable."
"The newer tools are quite pricey. There is a case of some fine tuning that can be done in terms of licensing. The IP based licensing that is offered makes the tool very expensive. If they want the IT industry to adopt it, the price should be looked at."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
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

RiskIQ Digital Threat Management
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

DocuSign, Outbrain, The Economist Group, Rackspace, The Citizen Lab
Bitbrains, Tesla, Just Eat, Crosskey Banking Solutions, Covenant Health, Youngstown State University
Find out what your peers are saying about CrowdStrike, Qualys, Trend Micro and others in Attack Surface Management (ASM). Updated: January 2026.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.