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SecureWorks Taegis VDR vs Tenable Nessus comparison

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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

Qualys TotalCloud
Sponsored
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
54
Ranking in other categories
Container Security (8th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (7th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (6th), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) (2nd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (6th)
SecureWorks Taegis VDR
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
47th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (15th)
Tenable Nessus
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
88
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Qualys TotalCloud is 1.2%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SecureWorks Taegis VDR is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tenable Nessus is 3.6%, down from 7.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vulnerability Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Tenable Nessus3.6%
Qualys TotalCloud1.2%
SecureWorks Taegis VDR0.5%
Other94.7%
Vulnerability Management
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2859021 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Security Engineer at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Risk-based triage has transformed container security and now prioritizes high-impact threats
The best features Qualys TotalCloud offers currently include managing cloud infrastructure and container security while facing major challenges such as alert fatigue. Traditional vulnerability scanners flag hundreds of CVEs on short-lived Kubernetes containers, some of which have no internet exposure or are gone before we can even triage them. I leverage Qualys TotalCloud to move beyond static CVSS. I use it to implement runtime exposure, correlation risk reprioritization, and shift-left integration. This notifies developers to fix a base image upstream rather than patching live ephemeral instances. In my work with cloud and container security, the biggest operational hurdle was alert fatigue. I use Qualys to shift left from static CVSS severity to context-aware risk prioritization. I correlated raw vulnerability data with real-time risk factors such as public network exposure, active runtime execution, or overly permissive IAM roles. This allows us to immediately drop the priority of isolated containers and escalate lower-severity CVEs that sit on an exposed, high-risk path. We can map these findings directly back to our CI/CD pipelines so developers can patch the root base images upstream. We have drastically cut down the signal-to-noise ratio, saved a lot of manual hours doing triage work, and ensured engineering effort goes directly towards high-impact risk reduction.
Jayaprakash Bojanapu - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of IT at Gokaldas Images (USA), Inc.
Automated risk assessment has improved data security but still needs finer file-level controls
In my opinion, SecureWorks Taegis VDR can be improved by adding some other important data security features. Since we are using a couple of backup devices through EDR only, my suggestion would be that additional security features are required so that we can smoothen the data flow. Data protection is a very significant concern for us, and we need security features that work at each file or directory level. I would like to see security features such as user level security, end user level security, group-wise security, and super user-wise security in the future. Time stamping is also very important for us. In the future, I would like to see additional features such as time stamping and file level stamping, as these are more important for us.
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

"In my opinion, this is the best tool."
"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."
"I would definitely recommend it because it is easy to handle any cloud resources."
"Qualys TotalCloud has positively impacted our organization by helping us save time and manage all assets and remediation, allowing us to achieve quarterly and half-yearly goals."
"Qualys TotalCloud has significantly reduced our workload in terms of managing risks, helping us to be more efficient and save substantial resources."
"Qualys TotalCloud's most valuable features are its cloud security posture management, Kubernetes, and container security capabilities."
"Vulnerability and threat detection and assessment of the criticality of the vulnerabilities exposed are most valuable."
"I would rate Qualys TotalCloud ten out of ten."
"I chose SecureWorks Taegis VDR because I trust SecureWorks, having worked with McAfee, Symantec, Trend Micro, Kaspersky, Carbon Black, Cylance, CrowdStrike, Palo Alto Cortex XDR, and more, and I would say SecureWorks Taegis VDR is outstanding among all the other vendors in terms of functionality, ease of access, and UI friendliness."
"It is a one-stop solution for different needs with separate APIs. The product offers different solutions for different companies."
"SecureWorks Taegis VDR's best features include unified detection and response, as it pulls in alerts and logs from all my different tools such as EDR, SIEM, firewall, cloud services, and Windows machines, collecting everything into one clean dashboard where I can view all these items and eliminate the need to hunt through ten dashboards to piece a threat together."
"I would assess the impact of SecureWorks Taegis VDR on my organization's threat detection efficiency as very positive because we have a couple of devices."
"The solution is great for scanning servers."
"What I like about it is the fact that it can figure out what changes we need to make on our systems to ensure that they're hardened properly."
"I like its ease of use. It has the script that is pre-built in it, and you just got to know which ones you're looking for."
"The vulnerability scanner is the most valuable feature."
"The most valuable feature of Tenable Nessus is the GUI and user-friendliness. Additionally, the environment is easy to work with."
"We looked at Tenable, Qualys and Rapid7. We found Tenable was the best of all three."
"It provides actionable recommendations to the implementation team towards security remedies."
"The plug-in text information is quite useful."
 

Cons

"Qualys's ticketing system can be confusing when assigning tasks to individuals, and support could be improved by offering instant call solutions with engineers in addition to ticket replies."
"Although TotalCloud is a helpful tool, some of its advanced features are still under development."
"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."
"TotalCloud could improve its scanning of niche devices like Wi-Fi dongles and USB modems because they are often untested. It covers everything else, like laptops, mobile devices, and Bluetooth IoT devices. They can improve on the small IoT devices because hackers and testers use these."
"The cost of Qualys TotalCloud is high and could be more competitive."
"A feature improvement could be the inclusion of Windows OS support for container security, as it is currently only supported for Linux."
"Qualys TotalCloud needs to enhance its scanning capabilities in the IP domain, as it currently lacks the functionality to resolve IPs to their corresponding domain names."
"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."
"Regarding technical support, I would say it is not that much up to the mark. That is one of the biggest concerns for us."
"I would like to improve SecureWorks Taegis VDR by enhancing the dashboard to provide a holistic view with granular data."
"There is always room for improvement in SecureWorks Taegis VDR, especially regarding user interface and navigation, as the platform is powerful but the UI can feel complex for new users."
"SecureWorks Taegis VDR is very stable, though there is scope for improvement."
"They should try to create an all-in-one solution."
"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."
"It would be nice for the professional module to include some of the reports available in the expert module."
"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."
"Online learning could be a bit better."
"As a vulnerability management tool, the only aspect that is weak in Tenable Nessus is reporting; the rest is very strong."
"Pricing is one of the most important features, and it is something that they can improve on."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Qualys TotalCloud is expensive, but it offers a premier solution with no headaches."
"The pricing is comparable. It is built into our other product, so I cannot piecemeal it. It is a part of our subscription."
"The cost is high, but it meets our organizational needs."
"As a middle management member, I do not have direct pricing knowledge, but based on the knowledge from our meetings, its pricing is competitive."
"I am not sure about the pricing. From what I understand, it is a bit on the higher side, but I do not have the exact numbers."
"It isn't cheap, but it's reasonable. It helps us to manage things with very few resources."
"Qualys TotalCloud offers competitive pricing given its comprehensive suite of features, including integration, assessment, remediation, and detection capabilities, all within a single platform."
"Qualys TotalCloud offers cost-effective licensing flexibility."
Information not available
"The price of Tenable Nessus is much more competitive versus other solutions on the market."
"In general, it is extremely expensive."
"While Tenable Nessus is a good enterprise solution, the high price would likely make it prohibitive to smaller organizations."
"There is an annual license required to use this solution."
"Tenable Nessus needs to be licensed. We own a license for the security center and that license is charged by the number of IP addresses that you can scan. You're allowed to have as many scanners as you want and there's no license for the number of scanners. We have a bunch of Nessus scanners out there, and as long as we're comfortable with staying under that IP address limit, that's really all we have to be concerned about."
"Nessus Manager is not an expensive product. It has its limitations, but the pricing reflects that. We have a yearly subscription."
"The price is reasonable."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
18%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
18%
Construction Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Wholesaler/Distributor
5%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise38
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business41
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise35
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Qualys TotalCloud?
We purchased Qualys TotalCloud for GCP and Azure as well. It is comparatively better than others regarding pricing. T...
What needs improvement with Qualys TotalCloud?
I am unsure about how Qualys TotalCloud can be improved. I do not have anything else to add about the needed improvem...
What is your primary use case for Qualys TotalCloud?
My main use case for Qualys TotalCloud is telemetry, although I am unsure about the specifics. A quick specific examp...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SecureWorks Taegis VDR?
I think the pricing of SecureWorks Taegis VDR is also higher compared to other options. The pricing is also more.
What is your primary use case for SecureWorks Taegis VDR?
The features I find most valuable in SecureWorks Taegis VDR include data security, which is the main concern for us. ...
What advice do you have for others considering SecureWorks Taegis VDR?
I have used SecureWorks Taegis VDR's automated risk assessment. The metrics I use to measure the impact of SecureWork...
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
No data available
No data available
 

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 SecureWorks Taegis VDR vs. Tenable Nessus and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
920,929 professionals have used our research since 2012.