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Cisco Vulnerability Management (formerly Kenna.VM) 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

Cisco Vulnerability Managem...
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Cisco Security Portfolio (11th), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (19th)
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. Cisco Vulnerability Management (formerly Kenna.VM) is designed for Risk-Based Vulnerability Management and holds a mindshare of 2.7%, up 2.0% compared to last year.
Tenable Nessus, on the other hand, focuses on Vulnerability Management, holds 5.1% mindshare, down 10.3% since last year.
Risk-Based Vulnerability Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cisco Vulnerability Management (formerly Kenna.VM)2.7%
Qualys VMDR12.5%
Rapid7 InsightVM10.8%
Other74.0%
Risk-Based Vulnerability Management
Vulnerability Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Tenable Nessus5.1%
Wiz6.6%
Qualys VMDR5.0%
Other83.3%
Vulnerability Management
 

Featured Reviews

AshishPaliwal - PeerSpot reviewer
Self-employed at Self-employed
Offers contextual prioritization and risk-based remediation of vulnerability
An improvement would be some sort of an integration with any GRC suite. There are a lot of GRC suites available, like Archer, MetricStream, Rsam, Protiviti, for example. So how would a solution like this work if my company has already invested thousands or maybe millions in a GRC solution? Do I still need it and how does it fit into an existing SAP environment? There could be interoperability, having more data sources, integrating Splunk, Qualys, FireEye, Rapid7, Carbon Black. I'm sure all that can be done to an extent, with a little more insight and a little more accuracy on the industry numbers and trends. I'd like the solution to offer any sort of assistance in any way with the remediation part, not just identification of vulnerability risk, and that is second.
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 risk context of any vulnerability is a valuable feature."
"Vulnerability assessment is the most valuable feature in Tenable Nessus, as it provides brief details regarding the vulnerability issues we have in our network."
"With the Tenable Nessus enterprise edition, you have unlimited licenses to scan the device."
"We looked at Tenable, Qualys and Rapid7. We found Tenable was the best of all three."
"I am impressed with the tool's vulnerability scanning."
"The solution provides time saving and cost saving benefits."
"The results are not that bad, but the key selling point is that it is an affordable tool set."
"It does exactly what you expect it to do, and its pricing is great. We couldn't really ask for a better deal."
"The most valuable feature of Tenable Nessus is the dashboard. They are convenient to use."
 

Cons

"An improvement would be some sort of an integration with any GRC suite."
"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."
"We'd like to see the solution embrace more user-friendliness."
"We have had some false positives in the past, which we hope can improve in the future."
"We'd like to see more integration potential within the solution."
"The reporting feature needs to be improved."
"The pricing point has increased significantly in recent years. The product's pricing has roughly tripled within the last couple of years, making us reconsider renewing the license for the scanner."
"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."
"Lacks some penetration testing-related services."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I think the pricing is based on the number of endpoints, so it's more subscription-based."
"The cost is around $4,300 per year. Use is unlimited. You don't pay more if you want to use it for another IP."
"The product is free."
"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."
"We incurred a single cost for a perpetual license, although I cannot comment on the price as this is above my management level."
"I think the price is fairly affordable. It provides a license that is fair."
"Its pricing is great and can't be improved. It is very cheap. It is less than 2,000 pounds a license, and you can't really ask for more. It has unlimited IPs and unlimited scans. There are no particular pricing constraints. The only additional cost is the inherent cost of the people to actually review the actual scans."
"The pricing is much more manageable versus other products."
"The solution has free options."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Retailer
14%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
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

Kenna.VM, Kenna Security, Kenna, Kenna Security Platform
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

TransUnion
Bitbrains, Tesla, Just Eat, Crosskey Banking Solutions, Covenant Health, Youngstown State University
Find out what your peers are saying about Qualys, Tenable, Rapid7 and others in Risk-Based Vulnerability Management. Updated: January 2026.
881,665 professionals have used our research since 2012.