Tenable Nessus is widely regarded as the 'gold standard' in vulnerability assessment, providing comprehensive and highly accurate scanning capabilities for a wide range of IT assets. It is designed for security practitioners, consultants, and small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs) who need a powerful, standalone scanner.
Key Features and Capabilities
Nessus is available in three main tiers: Essentials (Free), Professional, and Expert. Key features include:
- Comprehensive Vulnerability Coverage: Utilizes a massive plugin library (over 80,000 checks) maintained by Tenable's Zero Day Research team, ensuring detection of the latest vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and compliance issues.
- High-Speed, Accurate Scanning: Supports both credentialed (authenticated) and non-credentialed scanning to provide deep visibility with a low false-positive rate.
- Compliance Auditing: Includes pre-built and customizable audit files to measure configuration against standards like CIS, HIPAA, PCI DSS, and DISA STIG.
- Modern Attack Surface Scanning (Expert): The Expert version adds capabilities for scanning Infrastructure as Code (IaC) in the design/build phase (Shift Left) and external attack surface discovery, including web application scanning.
- Cross-Platform Deployment: Can be deployed on Windows, macOS, and Linux, and managed via a web-based interface.
- Offline Scanning: Supports air-gapped environments with Nessus Offline Mode for critical services.
Target Users and Use Cases
Nessus is primarily used by security analysts, penetration testers, security engineers, and DevSecOps teams. Its main use cases include:
- Vulnerability Management: Identifying, prioritizing (using Tenable's VPR score), and reporting on system weaknesses.
- Security Audits and Compliance: Ensuring adherence to regulatory and internal security policies.
- Penetration Testing: Providing a foundational scan to scope and inform manual penetration testing efforts.
- Patch Management: Identifying missing patches and outdated software to streamline remediation efforts.
