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Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management vs Tenable Nessus comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

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

Zafran Security
Sponsored
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
18th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) (3rd)
Microsoft Defender Vulnerab...
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (18th), Microsoft Security Suite (21st), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (6th)
Tenable Nessus
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
87
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Zafran Security is 1.1%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management is 2.3%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tenable Nessus is 5.9%, down from 10.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vulnerability Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Tenable Nessus5.9%
Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management2.3%
Zafran Security1.1%
Other90.7%
Vulnerability Management
 

Featured Reviews

Reviewer6233 - PeerSpot reviewer
Works at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Has become an indispensable tool in our cybersecurity arsenal
While Zafran Security is already a powerful tool, there are areas where it could be further improved to provide even greater value. One key area for enhancement is the searching capabilities within its vulnerabilities module. By incorporating the ability to create Boolean searches, users would gain the ability to apply more complex filters and customize their search criteria. This would greatly enhance the precision and efficiency with which security teams can identify and prioritize vulnerabilities. Having such tailored search capabilities would save time and resources by narrowing down vast lists of vulnerabilities to those that meet specific parameters relevant to our unique risk environment. Additionally, integrating more robust reporting and visualization tools would be advantageous. Enhanced dashboards that offer customizable visual representations of risk configurations and threat landscapes would facilitate better communication with stakeholders, making it easier to explain vulnerabilities and the rationale behind certain security measures. This would also aid in demonstrating the improvements and value derived from existing security investments to leadership and non-technical team members.
OB
Microsoft Solutions Manager at Self-Employed
Ensures strong threat and vulnerability management with continuous risk assessment
The major priority is identity, which is crucial; we have lots of companies in manufacturing, energy, or various sectors, and it varies from one to another. I assess Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management as very effective in continuously assessing vulnerabilities without requiring scans. We use automatic investigation and remediation features, safe attachments, safe links, and real-time reports, which are also very effective. For Active Directory, Defender has threat intelligence, and we are using that. The risk-based prioritization within Vulnerability Management affects my ability to manage vulnerabilities, particularly in relation to the Zero Trust Model utilized by our customers. The end-users often do as they please in their systems.
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

"Zafran is an excellent tool."
"We saw benefits from Zafran Security almost immediately after deploying it."
"Overall, we have seen about eighty-seven percent reduction of the number of vulnerabilities that require urgency to remediate, specifically the number of criticals."
"We are able to see the real risk of a vulnerability on our environment with our security tools."
"With Zafran Security, it integrates with your security controls, allowing you to take that risk score and reduce it based on the controls in place or increase the risk based on different factors, such as if the issue is internet reachable or if there's an exploit in the wild."
"Zafran has become an indispensable tool in our cybersecurity arsenal."
"The integration with Sentinel has been one of the most valuable features for my organization."
"The product’s most valuable features are compliance, recommendations, and inventories."
"Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management provides regular advisories and recommendations that help improve our security posture."
"The product's stability is very high...The scalability of the product is amazing."
"The integration with Sentinel has been one of the most valuable features for my organization."
"Overall, I would rate Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management a nine out of ten."
"The integration with SIEM is the best, specifically the native integration with Microsoft SIEM."
"One valuable feature is the Microsoft Security Scorecard."
"The plug-in text information is quite useful."
"Makes ransomware checking and OS auditing and implementation relatively easy."
"The product's most valuable features are vulnerability and asset management. It can define the rules and validate the configuration."
"Tenable Nessus has a good performance, is very user-friendly, and is easy to use."
"The most valuable feature of Tenable Nessus is real-time monitoring."
"Its initial setup was simple and straightforward."
"The solution provides time saving and cost saving benefits."
"Nessus' most valuable feature is vulnerability management because it helps to discover vulnerabilities proactively and integrates with patch management solutions so you can push patches."
 

Cons

"Initially, we were somewhat concerned about the scalability of Zafran due to our large asset count and the substantial amount of information we needed to process."
"The dashboarding and reporting functionality of Zafran Security is an area that definitely could use some improvements."
"I think the ability to have some enhanced reporting capabilities is something they can improve on, as they have good reports but we have asked for some specific reporting enhancements."
"The worst aspect is the refresh rate of the dashboard."
"The automated remediations can be more specific."
"They may need to improve the portal refresh rate for Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management because it takes time for recommendations to disappear after mitigation; sometimes, it takes one week, when it should ideally take only one to two hours."
"The general support could be improved."
"The technical support takes too much time to resolve tickets."
"There is a good solution from Microsoft, however, there is a gap between Windows and Linux management."
"It is challenging to extract and customize reports from the system."
"It is expensive."
"In terms of what could be improved, I would say its reporting portion."
"Pricing is one of the most important features, and it is something that they can improve on."
"The reporting could be improved. The reporting in Rapid7 is much better."
"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."
"Tenable Nessus is not feasible for a large company."
"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."
"Nessus' reporting could be more user-friendly."
"I would like to have a management option after the network scanning."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The product’s pricing is medium."
"The tool is a bit costly."
"I rate the product's price a three on a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."
"The licensing costs are reasonable."
"The licensing model follows a per-user per-month structure."
"The pricing is much more manageable versus other products."
"The price of Tenable Nessus could improve, it is expensive."
"I would like to see better discounts."
"In general, it is extremely expensive."
"Its price is high for Libya. The companies here in Libya don't have the awareness of and a good budget for cybersecurity services. If you want them to go for a product, you need to provide something different. This differentiation is related to the price. They should give about 40% to 45% discount per person on the current cost."
"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."
"We paid about six thousand dollars per license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business39
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise35
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zafran Security?
Since we stood Zafran Security up in our private cloud, we handle the maintenance on our side. As we opted not to use...
What needs improvement with Zafran Security?
In terms of areas for improvement, Zafran Security is doing a really great job as a new and emerging company. Oftenti...
What is your primary use case for Zafran Security?
My use cases for Zafran Security revolve around two primary areas. One is around vulnerability management and priorit...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management?
The documentation from Microsoft needs significant improvement. The documents are disorganized, with one document lin...
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. Yo...
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 ...
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 addre...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Information Not Available
Bitbrains, Tesla, Just Eat, Crosskey Banking Solutions, Covenant Health, Youngstown State University
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management vs. Tenable Nessus and other solutions. Updated: November 2025.
876,380 professionals have used our research since 2012.