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Morphisec 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

Qualys TotalCloud
Sponsored
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
11th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Container Security (11th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (7th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (8th), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) (1st), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (6th)
Morphisec
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
57th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (48th), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (30th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (61st), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (35th), Threat Deception Platforms (15th)
Tenable Nessus
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
88
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Qualys TotalCloud is 1.1%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Morphisec is 0.7%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tenable Nessus is 3.7%, down from 8.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vulnerability Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Tenable Nessus3.7%
Qualys TotalCloud1.1%
Morphisec0.7%
Other94.5%
Vulnerability Management
 

Featured Reviews

RO
IT Security Expert at Alior Bank S.A.
Unified risk scoring has improved our cloud visibility and simplifies remediation priorities
Qualys TotalCloud provides unified vulnerability and threat assessment across both IAS and SaaS. This solution provides a single prioritized view of risk, which helps reduce the work I would have to do. We are no longer based on CVSS; we are based on Qualys risk scoring, which is based on CVSS plus internal findings made by Qualys, and then assigns its own score. The TruRisk insight feature has found a small number of assets with high vulnerability scores, though I am cautious since some information is classified. Qualys TotalCloud has positively impacted our bank's performance, and we have definitely seen benefits after implementing this solution.
Rick Schibler - PeerSpot reviewer
VP of Information Technology at Kentucky Trailer
Offers in-memory protection at a lower price than competitors
Morphisec's in-memory protection is probably the most valuable feature because it stops malicious activity from occurring. If something tries to install or act as a sleeper agent, Morphisec will detect and stop it. Morphisec's Moving Target Defense is critical to hardening our attack surface. If it detects something, it indicates whether it's valid. That means you've got a breach requiring investigation. It detects anomalies but doesn't necessarily point to what caused them. You still need to do that work. The solution is reasonably easy to administer. They made some changes last year, adding a cloud-based monitoring solution that makes deploying and monitoring our endpoints easy.
MohammedJaffir - PeerSpot reviewer
Founder at Cipheroot Cybersecurity Solutions
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

"One of Qualys' best features is its categorization, which allows us to see the types of assets, their security postures, and the AI-powered version of the tool."
"I found the initial setup user-friendly."
"Qualys TotalCloud has positively impacted our bank's performance, and we have definitely seen benefits after implementing this solution."
"Qualys TotalCloud has significantly improved our organization by automating our reporting processes, reducing the time spent on report creation from two hours to less than fifteen to twenty minutes."
"The best part I like is the on-demand scans."
"The most valuable feature of Qualys TotalCloud is the visibility it provides."
"While automatic inventory detection upon connection is a helpful feature, a truly valuable capability would be assessing an environment's security posture against Azure and CIS best practices."
"Its dashboards are brilliant. It provides in-depth insights."
"Morphisec provides full visibility into security events from Microsoft Defender and Morphisec in one dashboard. Defender and Morphisec are integrated. It's important because it lowers the total cost of maintenance on the engineer's time, more or less. So the administrative time is dramatically reduced in maintaining the product. This saves an engineer around four to five hours a week."
"Morphisec has enabled us to become a lot less paranoid when it comes to staff clicking on things or accessing things that they shouldn't that could infect the whole system. Our original ransomware attack that happened came from someone's Google drive and then just filtered on through that. It has put our minds at ease a lot more in running it. It's also another layer of security that has been proven to be effective for us."
"Morphisec has given our security team's operations peace of mind and more time for patching."
"The product has absolutely worked flawlessly; we have had basically no issues, either with the product or with any type of virus or zero-day attacks, ransomware, nothing, as it has caught everything."
"We don't have to do anything as a user or as an admin. It does everything by default with its coding and inbuilt AI-based intelligence. We don't have to instruct it about what to do. It automatically takes corrective actions and quarantines or deletes a virus, malware, etc. That is the best part that I like about it."
"All the alerts are on the dashboard, which is quite simple and useful for us. You can easily check all the alerts that are being blocked or allowed, or whatever the action is. You can easily see that and you can take the necessary actions. You can add a PowerShell extension or any activities for blocking at your network level or for endpoints."
"Morphisec makes it very easy for IT teams of any size to prevent breaches of critical systems because of the design of their tool. When we evaluated Morphisec, the CIO and I sat and listened. What attracted us to them is the fact that it stops activity at the point of detection. That saves a lot of time because now we are not investigating and trying to trace down what to turn off. We have already prevented it, which makes it very much safer and more secure."
"I really like the integration with Microsoft Defender. In addition to having third-party endpoint protection, we're also enabling Defender... I like the reporting that we get from Defender, when it comes in. I like that it's one console showing both Morphisec and Defender where it provides me with full visibility into security events from Defender and Morphisec."
"The solution is worth the cost; it's a good investment."
"The ease of use is the primary valuable feature, and this specific version is very straightforward with the ability to modify and configure it based on different policies while offering a large number of plugins that keep it up to date with new vulnerabilities."
"It also has an executive report where you don't have to provide the client all the detail for them to sift though. But if they wish to dig through the detail they can."
"So far, I am quite pleased with this product and don't have any complaints."
"Using Nessus, we are able to scan and locate any potential vulnerabilities that our clients may have and point them out to them."
"Scanners and reports using CIS templates ("de-facto" standard, easy to fix and to locate correction tips at documentation), tests against cloud providers, database profiles, several types of telecom devices, and others highly customizable scans."
"The support has been really cooperative."
"Among the most valuable features are scanning for vulnerabilities and the reporting. The reporting templates are okay. I like that I can see all the hosts with different vulnerabilities."
 

Cons

"The vulnerability part is good, but the policy compliance module needs improvement because it involves a lot of manual work. Specifically, the remediation part of the controls requires enhancements."
"Their support could be improved."
"The patching process with Qualys Patch Management, which is part of TotalCloud, does not cover installing certain prerequisites on the servers or workstations. This shortcoming means we must rely on SCCM when any service stack updates or additional prerequisites are needed."
"The areas in the solution that have room for improvement include the UI/UX design, which should be improved, and they should integrate more artificial intelligence into the product."
"Qualys TotalCloud needs to improve its accuracy for non-Windows operating systems."
"Enhancing clarity regarding its compliance capabilities would be beneficial, as the current scope is limited in geographic coverage."
"Regarding technical support from Qualys, they respond, but the response time can be too long. Sometimes we need to wait weeks for solutions to simple questions."
"The price is very expensive, actually."
"Sometimes it generates false positive alerts. They need to continue working on that. They have provided solutions for it and have fixed issues with updated versions. The service is quite good but they need to work on it more so that there are no false positive alerts."
"I haven't been able to get the cloud deployment to work."
"It would be useful for them if they had some kind of network discovery."
"I haven't been able to get the cloud deployment to work. When there's an update, I'm supposed to be able to roll it out for the cloud solution, but right now I'm continuing to use our SCCM solution to update it."
"Morphisec is a venture startup. They are still early in their growth stage. They need to get mature on their customer support and on how they interface with system tools. For example, they need to get multifactor in place and an API for the major multi-factor systems, e.g., Okta, Duo, Ping, and Microsoft. They don't have them built in yet. They are working on them. It is just not there yet. Also, their stability, customer support, and processes need improvement, which is just part of maturity."
"Having to have an on-prem server required a lot of administration."
"Some of the filters for the console need improvement. There are alerts that show up and just being able to acknowledge that we've seen those and not turn them off, but dismiss them, would be a huge benefit."
"We have discovered some bugs in the new releases that they've had to fix, so I would like to see more testing and QA on their side before they release."
"My only concern is related to its pricing."
"I have found it is sometimes difficult to control the Zoom meeting sessions. For example, it is difficult to know who is talking and when trying to mute everyone but the speaker you end up muting everyone. When using multiple screens it is laborious to find the control buttons, such as to start a session. Additionally, when a recording is done I have found it difficult to find them, there should be an easier way to retrieve them."
"In terms of what could be improved, I would say its reporting portion."
"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."
"They should try to create an all-in-one solution."
"We find that some devices aren't pinged and the scans aren't done properly."
"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."
"Model OS costs (and its segregation schema for individual modules)."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"TotalCloud's price is about right where I would expect it to be."
"It isn't cheap, but it's reasonable. It helps us to manage things with very few resources."
"The pricing for TotalCloud is attractive and competitive in the market. Given the features, especially the dashboard, I have no concerns regarding pricing."
"The pricing is comparable. It is built into our other product, so I cannot piecemeal it. It is a part of our subscription."
"While Qualys TotalCloud's pricing is currently acceptable, it is becoming increasingly expensive and may soon be considered overpriced."
"Qualys TotalCloud is expensive."
"Although Qualys TotalCloud is relatively expensive due to its unique automation features, its cost-effectiveness is rated an eight out of ten, with ten being the most costly."
"The cost is high, but it meets our organizational needs."
"The pricing is definitely fair for what it does."
"It does not have multi-tenants. If South Africa wants to show only the machines that they have, they need their own cloud incidence. It is not possible to have that in a single cloud incidence with multiple tenants in it, instead you need to have multiple cloud incidences. Then, if you have that, it will be more expensive. However, they are going to change that, which is good."
"It is an annual subscription basis per device. For the devices that we have in scope right now, it is about $25,000 a year."
"We are still using a separate tool. I know for our 600 or I think we're actually licensed for up to 700 users, it runs me 23 or $24,000 a year. When you're talking to that many users plus servers being protected, that's well worth the investment for that dollar amount."
"It is a little bit more expensive than other security products that we use, but it does provide us good protection. So, it is a trade-off."
"It is priced correctly for what it does. They end up doing a good deal of discounting, but I think it is priced appropriately."
"Our licensing is tied into our contract. Because we have a long-term contract, our pricing is a little bit lower. It is per year, so we don't get charged per endpoint, but we do have a cap. Our cap is 80 endpoints. If we were to go over 80, when we renewed our contract, which is not until three years are over. Then, they would reevaluate, and say, "Well, you have more than 80 devices active right now. This is going to be the price change." They know that we are installing and replacing computers, so the numbers will be all over the place depending on whether you archive or don't archive, which is the reason why we just have to keep up on that stuff."
"Licenses are per endpoint, and that's true for the cloud version as well. The only difference is that there is a little extra charge for the cloud version."
"The price is reasonable."
"It has a fair cost and very good cost-benefit ratio."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"In general, it is extremely expensive."
"The is a free version of Tenable Nessus available."
"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 is high for the solution. There are free tools with similar functionality available. The solution cost approximately $3,500."
"Nowadays, your vulnerability applications are going to be kind of pricey because lots of them, including Rapid7, are based upon a base price, but then they add in the nodes. That's where they get you. If you're a big network, obviously, you need to scan everything. Therefore, it's going to be costly. The risk and insurance money associated with having ransomware on my networks is going to cost me more money, time, and marketing than the price of the tool. That's why I'm speaking only as an information security officer to security operations. This is the tool that is there in my toolbox to say whether we vulnerable or not. At this point, I don't care about how much it costs my company to have it because if I wasn't able to report it and we got ransomware, then who cares? I'm probably going to be out of business because it happened. That's why I don't care about the price. I have it, and I could use it effectively and do my report. At the end of the day, even if we get ransomware, as long as I reported it, followed my protocol, and put in the change, irrespective of whether it was ignored or denied, I did my job."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Construction Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Outsourcing Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Construction Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise29
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business40
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise35
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Qualys TotalCloud?
Areas that need improvement in every solution include the remediation part. The remediation steps should be simple en...
What is your primary use case for Qualys TotalCloud?
Our use case involves the assets that we have under cloud, the assets exposed to the internet, and the internal appli...
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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. 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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Tenable Nessus?
Based on my experience, the pricing for Tenable Nessus is somewhat higher, but customers still want to pay for it, so...
 

Also Known As

Qualys TotalCloud with FlexScan
Morphisec, Morphisec Moving Target Defense
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Lenovo/Motorola, TruGreen, Covenant Health, Citizens Medical Center
Bitbrains, Tesla, Just Eat, Crosskey Banking Solutions, Covenant Health, Youngstown State University
Find out what your peers are saying about Morphisec vs. Tenable Nessus and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,988 professionals have used our research since 2012.