What needs improvement with Tenable Nessus?

The user interface of Tenable Nessus feels outdated and could be more user-friendly.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.

Sometimes, the categorization for clients was tricky at first, however, they eventually got used to it.

The dashboard could be improved.

Tenable Nessus could include a broader range of IT assets. Nowadays, IT is not limited to laptops and desktops. It can be any environment in the organization, such as iOS or Android mobile phones. Apart from that, organizations use APIs and specific tools. We would like Tenable to cover every aspect of IT infrastructure, not just generic systems like laptops, desktops, switches, or servers. It should include every kind of device, like Raspberry Pi. This small chunk of devices acts as sensors in several organizations. We would like to be able to scan every device in the network, and the solution should present vulnerabilities within their system.

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. It would be beneficial if it could handle minor additions to versions similar to how Debian manages its patches. This feature would allow it to differentiate between patched and non-patched versions.

The product must be more comprehensive. It must catch all the issues.

There could be an integration between Tenable Nessus and other Tenable products. It will help us manage all the solutions using one dashboard. Additionally, they should include more learning material to know about the product.

I wouldn't want to change anything about Tenable Nessus since I haven't found or run into any issues in Tenable Nessus. I like Tenable since I find everything related to the solution simplified and easy to use. You can approach the online community of Tenable when you run into a problem, and there is a bunch of information available there that you can gather and use for troubleshooting purposes. I faced some problems with Tenable Nessus when dealing with some of our company's customers in China. The problems I faced with Tenable Nessus were related to its dashboard's customization capabilities and its ability to provide data to third-party sources. The solution should offer simplified data-sharing capabilities. Though we have the dashboards and can customize them, the options for customization are available in the templates provided by Tenable Nessus. It might not be possible with Tenable Nessus to add every component a person wants to a single dashboard since they can only choose whatever is available on the templates provided by Tenable Nessus. The aforementioned areas can be considered for improvement in the solution.

The price and scalability of the solution could improve.

It would be better if they had application-level support for mobile devices. They don't have anything to scan mobile devices. Tenable Nessus doesn't have a mobile application vulnerability assessment. I also have issues with the false positive rates. The product has limited features.

The solution can be annoyingly slow. The pricing is a bit high. We would like to see the inclusion of penetration testing capabilities if possible. Tenable has been mostly used in the on-premise environment, so it would be great if they could improve the transition to the cloud. The accuracy of the vulnerability assessment needs improvement as false alarms and false positives occur often. Applications are often flagged as critical when they are actually benign. To improve user experience, there needs to be an upgrade in the accuracy of the results and a more user-friendly interface. Sometimes it can be difficult to adjust the policies. When the solution has been previously installed. Making changes to policies requires navigating multiple steps. This process can be time-consuming and potentially confusing. Expert knowledge may be necessary in certain cases.

They should try to create an all-in-one solution. When I say all in one, I mean something that would be cheap, where I can scan a lot in terms of web applications. Right now, this is available. However, it's a bit expensive. If users want to start scanning applications, networking devices, et cetera, they should also try and work on the pricing for those and have everything together. The web application module should be included in Tenable itself.

To be honest, I haven't used it much to tell you that these are the things that should be improved. But I believe the UI should be enhanced somewhat. For example, there are two ways to find a report, and people are frequently confused as to which is the correct method for locating a full report. Sometimes they go in the opposite direction, so this is an area that may be improved.

It would be a good idea if they have a simulation of attacks or a use case for finding a new vulnerability or dealing with a zero-day attack. Right now, it works based on dealing with a vulnerability that is already detected and reported, and it would be great if they have a combination of a vulnerability that existed and another use case to have a more proactive approach to potential new issues. Therefore, doing a simulation of attacks to find a new or zero-day issue or vulnerability would be helpful.

Vulnerability recommendations are outdated and not in line with industry standards. The reporting tool should allow fancier customizations such as pivot or formula-based options. Cloud reviews should be a focus because AWS is taking over the market.

Multiple user access would be an area for improvement from a user-access perspective. A role-based access control feature would be great because at present, there is a limitation with only one account. If that account gets compromised or gets locked, then we will encounter problems. It would be good to have a way to store filters from searches so that you don't have to recreate them from scratch every time. To be able to have them saved as a list of filters would be really useful. It would be really useful to have a way to assess the risk of a specific vulnerability based on a number of factors which could be tailored. It could be a tailored set of factors you introduce to see a potential risk score or a different view of the CVSS score. A lot of organizations do this manually, and some of them have some other ways of identifying or assessing the risk of vulnerabilities. It would be really useful to have a framework which allows you to create a way to assess the risk of vulnerabilities on the platform and potentially prioritize them or provide information as a report to management or to other teams for resolution. It would be really nice to have a way to visualize the different results from the scans. For example, if you scan a Windows 2016 Server and you have a number of vulnerabilities, it would be nice to somehow show the vulnerabilities in a graphical format and potentially combine some of the outcomes into a graphical representation showing trending. Trending is quite important, especially when I speak to my senior management stakeholders and try to show the security posture and status. It would help to provide a long and wide view of where the vulnerabilities are and what kind of aging is present.

I think the reporting templates could be improved with Tenable Nessus.

I would like to see more on the automation side. There should be proper tools and support for automation in Tenable itself.

Nessus' reporting could be more user-friendly.

Tenable Nessus could improve the reporting.

There is very little to improve but cloud security tests would be something helpful to have. Tenable could also offer some penetration testing-related services, which would be beneficial.

Technically, it is an excellent and the best solution available in Libya. My only concern is related to its pricing. They are an emerging company in Libya, and they need to put in some effort to provide us with very good prices so that customers can go with the best solution. Chinese companies are getting into the market here, and they're providing very cheap solutions.

I would like to have a management option after the network scanning.

Tenable Nessus could improve reporting and information sharing. It would be helpful if we could share the reports and have a little bit better flexibility in the reporting of the data. In the next release, they should add some more integration with other security solutions that would be helpful.

Tenable Nessus could improve by having more steady updates which will reduce the vulnerabilities.

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.

The reports should be improved in Tenable Nessus. For example, when you are auditing compliance with CIS standards. It provides very poor reports.

While Tenable Nessus is a good enterprise solution, the high price would likely make it prohibitive to smaller organizations. We feel the licensing cost to be too high for our customers and us. EQA's and dashboards should be addressed in the next release.

I'd like to see a dashboard for this product because the report for counters is too simple. There needs to be something better for the client.

In terms of what could be improved, I would say that the reporting feature needs to be improved. Additionally, although it has the features, the enterprise edition is very limited. They need to add multiple reporting features in the enterprise edition.

Some things in the user interface could be better. The user interface could allow more adjustments to plugins. The price could also be better.

The price could be improved. They need more flexible pricing. If they had a very creative idea, maybe they could add a special feature. Even extending functions, or exploring new areas. If they were able to integrate it with the existing solution, that would be fine. I would like to see more integrations, more ideas or services, and functions offered. It's about wider functionality and not a question of integration. It's more a question of, creativity. If they have other ideas such as what could be added to the vulnerability management.

Unfortunately, the solution consumes more system resources when it's being run and I'd like that to be reduced.

While the solution is great for scanning servers, its features are limited when it comes to scanning network devices for vulnerabilities.

The solution should have a more in-depth level of scanning, with features to meet the developers. Other points that should be addressed involve the understanding of issues by the users and the need for improvising the reporting structure. The reports should also be more attractive and user-friendly. This is how Tenable Nessus occasionally works when drawing up something on the field. Additional features I wish to see addressed in the next release include customer support and ease of understanding of vulnerabilities and how they can be fixed. In contrast to Tenable Nessus, we have found Veracode to be more user-friendly, with a greater in-depth understanding of the details and how things can be fixed. Other points in its favor include study cases, customer support, training and e-learning. The solution is sort of down the mid range, so we are more happy with Veracode.

The price could be reduced.

The reporting interface is in need of improvement. The reports are okay, but the interface is a bit difficult to navigate in some cases. Nessus is not very good at identifying web application vulnerabilities, which means that we need to buy another product like Acunetix or EMC Networker to handle that part. This is an area that could be enhanced because we would prefer to have these capabilities in one application.

In terms of what could be improved, I would say its reporting portion. Additionally, we have the on-prem version, but sometimes we want to have an on-cloud deployment as well for certain projects, although not so many. The people who used it on cloud didn't find it as good as the version they were using on-prem. Overall, the cloud version could be improved.

The reporting is a bit cumbersome. A lot of times you have got to, if you want to test things, go in and then back all the way out, and then try something else, and that just becomes cumbersome. The testing functionality could be better. The way they had set up the scan sometimes is difficult as well. It's partly due to how it's set up where I am. It's not necessarily a Tenable thing, however, the user, how they assign users and roles, is strange. Sometimes if a coworker sets up a scan, I can't start it or stop it. That's just something that may be an issue on our set-up and not a Tenable issue.

The only thing that I don't like is KBs information. For example, if we scan our workstation and you go to the results report that Nessus provides, we are going to see a lot of KBs as remediation. But in most cases, the KBs are always superseded. Also, we are not able to apply those because Microsoft has already released a new TB. Nessus is not doing a good job in updating its remediation section of the reports. Remediation needs improvement. They are providing a lot of superseded KBs as remediation. For example, when you share that with several team members or with one individual, and you ask them to work on this, they reply with Microsoft already has something new.

The price could be more reasonable. I used the free Nessus version in my lab with which you can only scan 16 IP addresses. If I wanted to put it in the lab in my network at work, and I'm doing a test project that has over 30 nodes in it, I can't use the free version of Nessus to scan it because there are only 16 IP addresses. I can't get an accurate scan. The biggest thing with all the cybersecurity tools out there nowadays, especially in 2020, is that there's a rush to get a lot of skilled cybersecurity analysts out there. Some of these companies need to realize that a lot of us are working from home and doing proof of concepts, and some of them don't even offer trials, or you get a trial and it is only 16 IP addresses. I can't really do anything with it past 16. I'm either guessing or I'm doing double work to do my scans. Let's say there was a license for 50 users or 50 IP addresses. I would spend about 200 bucks for that license to accomplish my job. This is the biggest complaint I have as of right now with all cybersecurity tools, including Rapid7, out there, especially if I'm in a company that is trying to build its cybersecurity program. How am I going to tell my boss, who has no real budget of what he needs to build his cybersecurity program, to go spend over $100,000 for a tool he has never seen, whereas, it would pack the punch if I could say, "Let me spend 200 bucks for a 50 user IP address license of this product, do a proof of concept to scan 50 nodes, and provide the reason for why we need it." I've been a director, and now I'm an ISO. When I was a director, I had a budget for an IT department, so I know how budgets work. As an ISO, the only thing that's missing from my C-level is I don't have to deal with employees and budgets, but I have everything else. It's hard for me to build the program and say, "Hey, I need these tools." If I can't get a trial, I would scratch that off the list and find something else. I'm trying to set up Tenable.io to do external PCI scans. The documentation says to put in your IP addresses or your external IP addresses. However, if the IP address is not routable, then it says that you have to use an internal agent to scan. This means that you set up a Nessus agent internally and scan, which makes sense. However, it doesn't work because when you use the plugin and tell it that it is a PCI external, it says, "You cannot use an internal agent to scan external." The documentation needs to be a little bit more clear about that. It needs to say if you're using the PCI external plugin, all IP addresses must be external and routable. It should tell the person who's setting it up, "Wait a minute. If you have an MPLS network and you're in a multi-tenant environment and the people who hold the network schema only provide you with the IP addresses just for your tenant, then you are not going to know what the actual true IP address that Tenable needs to do a PCI scan." I've been working on Tenable.io to set up PCI scans for the last ten days. I have been going back and forth to the network thinking I need this or that only to find out that I'm teaching their team, "Hey, you know what, guys? I need you to look past your MPLS network. I need you to go to the edge's edge. Here's who you need to ask to give me the whitelist to allow here." I had the blurb that says the plugin for external PCI must be reachable, and you cannot use an internal agent. I could have cut a few days because I thought I had it, but then when I ran it, it said that you can't run it this way. I wasted a few hours in a day. In terms of new features, it doesn't require new features. It is a tool that has been out there for years. It is used in the cybersecurity community. It has got the CV database in it, and there are other plugins that you could pass through. It has got APIs you can attach to it. They can just improve the database and continue adding to the database and the plugins to make sure those don't have false positives. If you're a restaurant and you focus on fried chicken, you have no business doing hamburgers.

Currently, they don't have all of the features that I am looking for. I am looking for a technology that installs agents into the machines to perform complicated scanning. That's a good feature that I'm looking for. Our issues are not all due to Tenable Nessus; we have more than one console that we administrate.

It wasn't very clear how the scripts are running the scans. There's information about the script but it's not straightforward. The script information for each of the plugins should be available, but it doesn't give us straightforward direct information about how it was executed. That needs to be more clear. We find that the solution causes several issues due to the fact that it runs even before it calculates, the asset in prevention. I can't think of any features that are lacking.

Some of our customers are operating on the cloud as well as on-premises. 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.

- Add the possibility to customize attributes that define the assets critical level based on the company's "business sense". - Improve integration and tests for OT platforms, OT application, OT hardware, and non-Ethernet protocols. - Improve the exchange of info/insights/attributes with RM (Risk Management) domain. - Offer a more flexible strategic and high-level dashboards based on previous comments (minus technical and more business-oriented) - Model OS costs (and its segregation schema for individual modules).

One area that has room for improvement is the reporting. I'm preparing reports for Windows and Linux machines, etc. Currently, I'm collecting three or four reports and turning them into one report. I don't know if it is possible to combine all of them in one report, but that would be helpful. If the scans which I have already prepared could be used to combine the results into one report, it would save me additional work. Also, when a new machine is brought into the domain, when it's first connected by the system administrator, it would be good to have some kind of automatic, basic vulnerability scan. Of course, I would have to enter my credentials if I wanted something additional, but it would be useful if, the first time, if that basic process happened. Otherwise, it can be problematic for me when, for example, a new Oracle Database is brought on. I may only be notified after 10 days that it has been connected and only then can I do a vulnerability assessment and I may find a lot of vulnerabilities. It would be better to know that before they put it into production. It would be great to have something automatically recognize a new server, a new PC, and do a basic vulnerability assessment.

We use credentialed scans. They need more permissions and more changes or settings on Windows and Linux. Also, Agent scanning is more efficient than credential scanning but Agent scanning is more expensive than credential scanning. I prefer, mainly, the Agent scan over the credential scan, it's better. But we will continue to use the credential scan. I would like to see Tenable make some improvements to the credential scanning; more vulnerabilities, because most of the problems have occurred on Windows Server. We have some scanning issues.

One area with room for improvement is instead of there just being a PDF format for output, I'd like the option of an Excel spreadsheet, whereby I could better track remediation efforts and provide reporting off of that. Or, if they change the product itself for you to add comments of remediation efforts and allow you to sort on that and report on it, that would be helpful. Most of us would rather not have that information out in the cloud. We'd rather have it in-house. It would be better if you could provide it in an Excel spreadsheet for us to work with.

There is room for improvement in finishing the transition to the cloud. We'd like to see them keep on improving the Tenable.io product, so that we can migrate to it entirely, instead of having to keep the Tenable.sc on-prem product. There is also room for improvement in some of the reporting and the role-based access. They have a pretty defined roadmap. They know where the gaps are, but it's a totally different product and so there's a lot of work that they have to do to get it to match.

The Nessus predictive prioritization feature is very nice, the way it displays. The interface could look better, but it has everything it needs. It could do a better grouping of the workstations and run a better schedule. But it was sufficient in what it provided. There is room, overall, for improvement in the way it groups the workstations and the way it detects, when the vulnerability is scanned. Even when we would run a new scan, if it was an already existing vulnerability, it wouldn't put a new date on it.

I would like to see an improvement in the ranking of high, medium and low vulnerability.

* I think that the next versions could improve the graphical interface to make more intuitive the management of the reports. * Additionally, it could include better features in the vulnerability scan at the language level.

The reporting functionality needs improvement. I think it would be beneficial to have a high level explanation for a particular user.

This is still a maturing product. Tenable is only a scanner for one ability, while other solutions like Rapid7 have more tools for verification. We still have to manually verify to see if the vulnerability is a false positive or not.

From my point of view, the solution basically is not for large enterprises. I also think there should be built-in plugins for the public cloud vendors.

* They should improve the I/O reporting and the customized spreadsheet export feature. * Multiple steps to create an actionable plan will be a great addition to Nessus.