In our organization, we only use Nessus for vulnerability assessment. We are using Tenable.sc and Nessus as threat scanners.
Senior Cybersecurity Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Straightforward scanning and reporting and has a valuable vulnerability assessment feature
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable feature of this solution is the vulnerability assessment."
- "The solution needs to improve the vulnerability assessment because we have experienced some challenges with accuracy."
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature of this solution is the vulnerability assessment. Also, the scanning and reporting are very straightforward.
What needs improvement?
The solution needs to improve the vulnerability assessment because we have experienced some challenges with accuracy.
Tenable.sc would benefit from a more user-friendly interface for the hands-on users of the configuration assessment. It is difficult to modify the policies because they require significant expertise that regular users do not have.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Tenable.sc for more than five years.
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October 2024
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What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have a team of four people that manage Tenable.sc on a daily basis.
How are customer service and support?
Customer service and support with Tenable is good. They are knowledgeable and responsive. I would rate their service a four and a half out of five.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup of Tenable.sc is very easy. I would rate the implementation a five out of five for ease of setup.
What about the implementation team?
We implemented the solution through our in-house team.
What other advice do I have?
For anyone considering implementing Tenable.sc into their organization, I would recommend that they have the proper design of the solution and the proper placement of the scanners before implementing the solution.
Tenable is a good product, I have no concerns with it as a solution.
I rate this product a nine out of ten overall.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Senior Manager at Capgemini
Useful scanning, beneficial dashboards, and effective automation
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable features of Tenable SC are scanning, reporting, dashboards, and automation."
- "Tenable SC can improve by adding more integrations with HCI-type tools and more accurate vulnerability detection."
What is our primary use case?
We use Tenable SC for internal vulnerability scans with agents, and agentless scanning in the cloud. For example, we're scanning the AMI in the cloud and making it part of the base image.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable features of Tenable SC are scanning, reporting, dashboards, and automation.
What needs improvement?
Tenable SC can improve by adding more integrations with HCI-type tools and more accurate vulnerability detection.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Tenable SC for approximately three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Tenable SC is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability of Tenable SC is scalable.
We have more than 10,000 people using this solution. We are using the solution extensively.
How are customer service and support?
The support from Tenable SC is good.
I rate the support from Tenable SC a four out of five.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We previously used Qualys.
How was the initial setup?
The implementation of Tenable SC is straightforward. It took us approximately two to three months to complete.
I rate the initial setup of Tenable SC a four out of five.
What about the implementation team?
We did the implementation of Tenable SC in-house. We used five or six staff members for the process and we did most of it through automation. We have engineers, managers, administrators, and product managers assisting.
What other advice do I have?
I would recommend this solution to others.
I rate Tenable SC an eight out of ten.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Buyer's Guide
Tenable Security Center
October 2024
Learn what your peers think about Tenable Security Center. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: October 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.
IT Security Specialist at a consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees
Automatic scanning distribution and the ability to write custom audit files are distinguishing features
Pros and Cons
- "One of the most valuable features is their distributed scan model for allotting engines to work together as a pool and handle multiple scans at once, across multiple environments. Automatic scanning distribution is a distinguishing feature of their toolset."
- "It's good at creating information, it's good creating dashboards, it's good at creating reports, but if you want to take that reporting metadata and put it into another tool, that is a little bit lacking."
What is our primary use case?
Vulnerability assessment and compliance auditing are our primary use cases. That includes baseline configuration scanning. We use it to protect everything in the enterprise environment: servers, workstations, pretty much all operating systems, networking gear. We are doing cloud and we are doing some IOT. We are not using their web application scanning tool.
How has it helped my organization?
The ability to view the plug-ins, the way that the plug-in library works, is really good. It's not an individual list of 80 million different CVEs. We can actually just say, "Hey, here's a plug-in," and it really helps us to boil things down. Instead of having a million CVEs, here's the specific plug-ins that are actually tying the CVE families together. That helps our platform owners, if there is an issue, to see what it is and understand better how to fix it.
Also, the fact that they display the very specific plug-in output in their details area helps our platform owners know, if there's an issue, specifically what was checked and what versions it was on at the time of the test. That's just huge. It increases the trust in the information from the tool. It cuts down on accusations of false-positives and it helps people do their job better.
It helps us to understand our cyber-exposure. At the end of the day, if you don't know what you have, then you cannot defend against it. Understanding what services, what technologies, and all those components will also give us an idea about how to predict what kinds of attacks are the things that we need to guard against in the future.
It also helps us focus resources on the vulnerabilities that are most likely to be exploited. Looking at what actually has an exploit available along with consideration of other things such as network proximity times and information about the threat - either VPR or CVSS - pulling all that together does allow us to identify pretty quickly what are the high-priority targets that we should work on.
What is most valuable?
One of the most valuable features is their distributed scan model for allotting engines to work together as a pool and handle multiple scans at once, across multiple environments. Automatic scanning distribution is a distinguishing feature of their toolset.
Also, the ability to trend data back as far back as we have disk space for, is helpful.
Finally, the ability to write custom audit files is a really helpful and useful feature. That's something that not a lot of assessment companies have gotten right. There's room for improvement, but literally being able to take the text file, open it up, and adjust the changes, write your own regex and write your own checks, is huge.
What needs improvement?
It's good at creating information, it's good creating dashboards, it's good at creating reports, but if you want to take that reporting metadata and put it into another tool, that is a little bit lacking. It does great for things for the API. For instance, if we say, "What vulnerabilities do we have?" or "How many things have we scanned?" those things are great. But if we want to know more trending stuff over time, it can create a chart, but that's in a format which is really difficult to get into another program. Integration into other reporting platforms, or providing more specific scanning program metadata, would be an opportunity.
It does have a fully-bolstered API which is available online that you can look at, but it is more aimed at getting more vulnerability information out instead of reporting information out.
For how long have I used the solution?
We've been using it for about two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We've had more problems with the underlying stuff that is running the operating system, as opposed to actually running Tenable. Tenable SecurityCenter has been pretty stable. We've only had one or two smaller technical issues. There have been other issues, but they've not been Tenable's fault.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It does have an upper limit. You can go on their website and see what their upper IP limit is.
We have seen that more and more teams want to get access to the data and get access to their vulnerability information, and it really has helped us grow our program.
How are customer service and technical support?
Their tier-one, initial tech support is pretty bad. Their premium support is excellent. Whether premium support comes at an extra fee depends on how your negotiations go.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We migrated from Nexpose. We switched because Nexpose is not a scalable product for an enterprise. Also, in most instances, SecurityCenter is less false-positive prone and the detection seems to be better in most instances.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was very straightforward. In fact, for some of our teams, we've actually done - "capture the flag" is a bad word for it - but effectively that type of an activity, and they pretty much go from naked box to Tenable scanning instances within a couple of hours. It's very easy to set up.
I can safely say that it can be deployed with one person. And it doesn't require a lot of maintenance. It depends on how much you use it for, but it's mostly just set-it-and-forget-it. Then there is just the mechanical stuff of patching the box and applying system updates, but it actually does a pretty good job most of the time.
What was our ROI?
We've seen return on investment through visibility, scan stability, ensuring that we're able to assess our environment. Also, ensuring that we are able to have good confidence in the data, and that we're able to do out-of-the-box reporting and various other dashboards that really help us drive our program and help sell our case.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We evaluated Qualys. It depends on whether you want to do on-prem or in the cloud. Qualys really is a black box. You literally put this thing on your network, you can't touch it, and if you want to do something like troubleshoot, it is just not very friendly from an "if things go wrong" perspective.
What other advice do I have?
Make sure that your sizing is done correctly, in terms of the hardware size. When you do buy Tenable, a lot of times you'll use Professional Services to help you implement the tool. Whatever advice Tenable has, listen to it very specifically and also talk to them specifically about what your goals are. Instead of talking tactics, talk about goals. What's going to happen is that they may say "Hey, we're going to do things slightly differently than how you used to do it," but in a lot of instances, they're going to be right.
In terms of features that we're looking forward to, VPR is one that we're going to start using more. And they also recently had a SAML integration for single sign-on. That was a new feature in 5.9.
Overall, Tenable is easily a nine out of ten. It's not a ten because there is no perfect tool out there, and Tenable SecurityCenter does have its limitations.
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
Assistant Manager - Cyber & Cloud Security at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
A scalable solution for detecting and pro-actively mitigating network vulnerabilities
Pros and Cons
- "I think that this is a good solution for evaluating vulnerability in the network."
- "The web application scanning area can be improved."
What is our primary use case?
The primary use case is to perform vulnerability assessments across the entire network.
How has it helped my organization?
This solution has given us visibility of the vulnerability in our network. It also shows what needs to be done to negate the vulnerabilities by providing links to the solution for those issues. Generally, we are now able to manage our vulnerabilities better. We can identify them, prioritize them, and then negate them. It has improved our security posture.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature is its ability to scan for vulnerabilities in our important systems, networks devices, and so on.
What needs improvement?
The web application scanning area can be improved.
A feature that I would like to see is the ability to integrate with exploit tools.
For how long have I used the solution?
Two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's a really stable solution. So far, I have not had any issues. Once it was installed it was very stable, very few bugs. It has topped expectations.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It's easily scalable. If you are required to scan more assets then you just request for it to be expanded, such as from two thousand to five thousand. Scalability is not an issue.
The system is used by around thirty-five users including system admins, who ensure that the system is up, and the application admins who are responsible for fixing the issues that are picked up with the solution.
We use it across our entire network so we cannot expand its use any further.
How are customer service and technical support?
Their technical support is quite good, and they're very responsive. If there is any issue they perform quite quickly. Also, the local partner is well versed in the solution so they give us the support we need.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We did not use a solution prior to this one.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup, including the GUI, is very straightforward.
The implementation took about three months, and then the maturation took about six months.
We have about two people for maintenance.
What about the implementation team?
We were working with a local partner for the deployment.
What was our ROI?
We have seen ROI for this solution. It has reduced our security vulnerabilities. Even during the national audit, one of the findings is that this solution is helping us be more productive. We're able to find these issues before somebody else finds them. We can fix them before they are discovered by others.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The licensing costs for this solution are approximately $100,000 US, and I think that covers everything.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing this solution we evaluated Qualys Labs and Rapid7.
What other advice do I have?
This is a good solution for evaluating vulnerability in the network. It gives wide coverage, and it is able to scan most platforms on the network.
I would rate this product an eight out of ten.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Senior Manager, IT Security at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
With the Assurance Report Cards, we can have a quick review of security concerns in a simple glance.
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable feature of the product is the Assurance Report Card, which gives us an overview of the security poster in just a simple glance."
- "Initial setup was pretty straightforward."
- "It basically reviews our threat landscape vulnerability."
- "In terms of configuration, there is some level of flexibility that we are not able to achieve."
- "At times we have had the typical bugs."
What is our primary use case?
Basically it reviews our threat landscape vulnerability. So, we just want to be sure that we check compliance in terms of our configuration and compliance to our policies. But, the key is to make sure that we are not exposed to vulnerabilities that can be exploited. So, it's more of just securing our threat landscape.
How has it helped my organization?
It easily detects issues, and alarms the site.
What is most valuable?
One valuable feature is the Assurance Report Card. with the Assurance Report Card, we are able to give our overview about security posters in just a glance. And with a report to cut this we can quickly, our executives can quickly consume that without going into the difficulties of the vulnerability issue.
What needs improvement?
In terms of the configuration of the reports, there's some level of flexibility that we are not able to achieve. In terms of configuring the reports to achieve certain percentages and all of that. So, that's really the main thing I've noticed. But, apart from that, I think it's one of the best vulnerability management tools I've used, in terms of giving us the full visibility into the environment.
For how long have I used the solution?
One to three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
There were no crashes, or anything of that sort. The solution is stable. At times, we have had the typical bugs, but it's not something I would say is a big deal. It is maybe once in a quarter--insignificant.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I did not have any issues with scalability. This is because once you scope the main control, the Security Center box, you do proper saving on the main box in terms of storage. Initially, when we did the first installation, we did not properly size our storage. So, we quickly entered issues. But, since it was Linux box, we were able to reconfigure and make development for additional storage. Once we did that, there has not been anything that tested the scalability. So, when the growth becomes a little high, we just add a box and provide a scanner. Then, you define the territory within which you can scan, because each scanner can be assigned to a given territory in terms of sub-nets, and so on.
How are customer service and technical support?
The tech support was fairly good enough. I would not rate them as top-notch, but it was fairly good enough. I would give it a rating between 70-80%.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I considered Rapid7 Nexpose and Metasploit in the past.
How was the initial setup?
It was pretty straightforward.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It is slightly more expensive than other solutions in the same sphere.
What other advice do I have?
If you are considering a product like this, you must take into account and properly plan, scope, and scan. You need to know how to properly place your scanners and how to schedule automatic scans. You need to properly schedule your scans, so for example you don't need to scan your data center during that day when your business is most active, you can schedule your scans to run in the middle of the night, when your systems are least active.
If you wake up on LAN, then you can even scan clients during the night. You schedule wake up on LAN, your boxes are woken up on LAN, then the scanning is run, and then the boxes are shut down once the scan is over. So that's proper scoping and planning with this solution.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Assistant manager IT security at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Accurate vulnerability detection, helpful for compliance, and easy to scale
Pros and Cons
- "Compliance and vulnerability scans are most valuable. Compliance scan helps in validating how our teams are complying, and vulnerability scan helps in future-proofing. Its vulnerability detection is accurate."
- "Its reporting can be improved. It is not easy to generate a scan report the way we want. The data is okay, but we can't easily change the template to make it look the way we want."
What is our primary use case?
We use Tenable SC for compliance and vulnerability scans.
We are fully updated in terms of the version, and we have its latest version.
What is most valuable?
Compliance and vulnerability scans are most valuable. Compliance scan helps in validating how our teams are complying, and vulnerability scan helps in future-proofing. Its vulnerability detection is accurate.
What needs improvement?
Its reporting can be improved. It is not easy to generate a scan report the way we want. The data is okay, but we can't easily change the template to make it look the way we want.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this solution for about two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is stable and reliable, but it also depends on the on-premise resources.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is easy to scale. It is currently being used by a few people in our company.
How are customer service and support?
We sometimes took support from Tenable when we had issues with the scans and we couldn't get the results. They were helpful. It is easy to get support.
How was the initial setup?
It is easy to set up. We need to set it up from the appliance.
What about the implementation team?
We can do it on our own, but we sometimes need help from the vendor.
Its maintenance is done from our side.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It is a bit expensive. Everything is included in the license.
What other advice do I have?
It has been good so far. I would rate it an eight out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Information Security Architect at Injazat Data Systems
Speedy testing and user-friendly dashboards
Pros and Cons
- "Tenable.sc is user-friendly."
- "The user interface can be improved."
What is our primary use case?
The solution is being used to assess Windows servers and ESXi servers, and VMware ESXi.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable features of the solution are the dashboards and speed of the test.
Tenable.sc is user-friendly.
What needs improvement?
The user interface can be improved.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Tenable.sc for a month.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution appears to be easily scalable.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Previously to using the solution the organization used Tripwire. The switch was made because Tripwire was not being updated often, the reporting was very bad, and the support was no good.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was easy and took only two weeks to deploy.
What about the implementation team?
The implementation was done through a consultant.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
For 500 users the licensing fee is roughly $100,000.
What other advice do I have?
I rate Tenable.sc nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Security Engineer at Protego trust
Provides us with critical alerts in case we encounter any vulnerabilities
Pros and Cons
- "The tool provides us insight into the happens of the network and its hosts. It provides me with a list of hosts."
- "The solution needs to improve its support. I would like to see a bird's eye view of my network architecture. I would also like to see the continuous view feature in the tool."
What is our primary use case?
The solution is a vulnerability scanner that helps us check if we are covered on the audit and compliance aspect. It provides us with critical alerts in case we encounter any vulnerabilities. The tool also helps us with patching. It also gives us notifications whenever certificates like SSL expire.
How has it helped my organization?
The tool provides us insight into the happens of the network and its hosts. It provides me with a list of hosts.
What is most valuable?
The product gives us reports whenever we setup a scan.
What needs improvement?
The solution needs to improve its support. I would like to see a bird's eye view of my network architecture. I would also like to see the continuous view feature in the tool.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The tool is pretty stable. I would rate it a ten out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I would rate the tool's scalability a nine out of ten. My company has two users for the tool.
How was the initial setup?
I wasn't part of the tool's initial deployment. However, when we had to install the upgrades, we had to do the deployment all over again. The tool's deployment was easy.
What was our ROI?
We have seen ROI with the tool's use.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate the tool a seven out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Updated: October 2024
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Learn More: Questions:
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