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Tenable Nessus vs Tenable Security Center comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 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
7.1
Tenable Nessus enhances security and threat management, improving visibility and preventing costly attacks, though ROI quantification is challenging.
Sentiment score
7.2
Tenable Security Center boosts ROI by reducing costs, enhancing security, ensuring compliance, and preventing breaches with comprehensive asset visibility.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.9
Tenable Nessus customer service is responsive and effective, though complex issues occasionally face delays; overall satisfaction is high.
Sentiment score
7.4
Tenable Security Center's support is responsive and efficient, with room for improvement, particularly in international and standard support.
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
7.1
Tenable Nessus is scalable and adaptable, although large enterprises may face challenges with extensive data and cloud limitations.
Sentiment score
8.2
Tenable Security Center is highly scalable, easily supporting large environments with proper setup, despite initial network adjustments.
Whether managing 50 servers today or 500 tomorrow, performance or capacity are not hindered.
Scalability is a bit limited with Tenable Security Center.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Users praise Tenable Nessus's stability and reliability, with minimal issues that are easily resolved, making it highly dependable.
Sentiment score
8.0
Tenable Security Center is stable, with minor bugs and performance issues; user ratings range from eight to ten.
We have not encountered any issues with missing network items or errors in API and webhook interactions.
 

Room For Improvement

Tenable Nessus users seek improved reporting, UI, integration, vulnerability accuracy, and expanded coverage with better management, customization, and pricing.
Users seek easier integration, improved UI, better support, flexible reporting, and enhanced features for Tenable Security Center.
The documentation is not well-organized, which can be confusing when searching for solutions or specific information related to Tenable Nessus Professional.
It's important for Tenable to catch up on testing capabilities that are present in solutions like Qualys.
The reports and plugins for reports and scans could benefit from enhancements.
 

Setup Cost

Tenable Nessus offers competitive pricing, appealing to smaller organizations, with pricing from $2,000 to $6,000 and no hidden fees.
Tenable Security Center is expensive, with costs from $13,000 to over $100,000, depending on asset count and license type.
Tenable Nessus's pricing is adequate if it is fully utilized.
The product is somewhat pricey, reflecting its valuable features and status as a high-quality solution in the vulnerability management market.
The cost of Tenable Security Center is reasonable for our company.
 

Valuable Features

Tenable Nessus excels in comprehensive vulnerability management with automation, ease of integration, and cost-effective, customizable solutions.
Tenable Security Center offers robust vulnerability scanning, user-friendly dashboards, and seamless third-party integration with low false positives.
The scanning and reporting features are the most valuable aspects of Tenable Nessus.
The features I personally like include host discovery.
Tenable Security Center provides an overall score of vulnerabilities, comparing an organization with others in the same industry.
The most effective feature of Tenable Security Center for detecting vulnerabilities is its capability for critical mapping.
 

Categories and Ranking

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
Tenable Security Center
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
53
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (13th), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Tenable Nessus is 12.5%, down from 15.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tenable Security Center is 7.8%, down from 13.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vulnerability Management
 

Featured Reviews

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.
JoaoManso - PeerSpot reviewer
Good dashboards, reporting, and technical support, with a low rate of errors
Parallel scanning would be a nice improvement because it would speed up the detection process. It is not possible to search for vulnerabilities and do compliance checking at the same time. Rather, they are done one after the other. The integration is very good, although it still needs to improve. For example, it would be useful to have better integration with other tools in the space of identity management (IAM). As it is now, integration with new tools has to be developed specifically, so it's not easy. We would like to see better collection capability for external data that will help to improve detection and discovery.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
41%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Educational Organization
22%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What do you like most about Tenable SC?
The tool's dashboard and reporting capabilities match our company's needs since we are able to modify the basic view to create a new dashboard, and it works out very well for our needs.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Tenable SC?
The product is somewhat pricey, reflecting its valuable features and status as a high-quality solution in the vulnerability management market.
What needs improvement with Tenable SC?
While Tenable Security Center is highly effective, there is always room for continuous improvements. The reports and plugins for reports and scans could benefit from enhancements. Overall, it is a ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Tenable.sc, Tenable Unified Security, Tenable SecurityCenter
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bitbrains, Tesla, Just Eat, Crosskey Banking Solutions, Covenant Health, Youngstown State University
IBM, Sempra Energy, Microsoft, Apple, Adidas, Union Pacific
Find out what your peers are saying about Tenable Nessus vs. Tenable Security Center and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,020 professionals have used our research since 2012.