Tenable Nessus
Nessus is a vulnerability assessment solution providing deep-point-in-time scans to identify security flaws, misconfigurations, and malware across your modern IT infrastructure, including cloud, containers, and traditional assets.
Wiz
Wiz is a cloud security platform that provides full-stack visibility and risk prioritization by scanning your entire cloud environment without agents to identify and fix critical vulnerabilities and misconfigurations.
Quick Comparison
| Feature | Tenable Nessus | Wiz |
|---|---|---|
| Website | tenable.com | wiz.io |
| Pricing Model | Freemium | Custom |
| Starting Price | Free | Custom Pricing |
| FREE Trial | ✓ 7 days free trial | ✘ No free trial |
| Free Plan | ✓ Has free plan | ✘ No free plan |
| Product Demo | ✓ Request demo here | ✓ Request demo here |
| Deployment | ||
| Integrations | ||
| Target Users | ||
| Target Industries | ||
| Customer Count | 0 | 0 |
| Founded Year | 2002 | 2020 |
| Headquarters | Columbia, USA | New York, USA |
Overview
Tenable Nessus
Nessus helps you identify and fix security vulnerabilities before attackers can exploit them. You can scan your entire environment—including cloud instances, web applications, and traditional network hardware—to find missing patches, software flaws, and configuration errors. It provides a clear view of your attack surface so you can prioritize the most critical risks to your business.
You can choose between different versions depending on your needs, ranging from a free version for educators and students to professional and expert versions for security consultants. It simplifies the complex task of vulnerability assessment with pre-built templates and automated reporting. Whether you are securing a small office or a complex hybrid-cloud environment, you can rely on its extensive plugin library to stay protected against the latest threats.
Wiz
Wiz gives you a complete picture of your cloud security posture without the hassle of deploying agents. By connecting to your environment via API, it scans every layer—including virtual machines, containers, and serverless functions—to build a unified graph of your infrastructure. You can see how different risks like vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and exposed secrets interconnect to create attack paths.
The platform helps you cut through the noise by prioritizing the issues that actually matter to your business. Instead of chasing thousands of alerts, you can focus on the toxic combinations of risks that pose the greatest threat. It is designed for security and development teams at mid-market and enterprise companies who need to secure complex deployments across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and Kubernetes.
Overview
Tenable Nessus Features
- Pre-Built Scan Templates Start scanning immediately using over 450 pre-configured templates for common audits like PCI-DSS and HIPAA compliance.
- Live Results Perform offline vulnerability analysis against your scan history to find new threats without running a new scan.
- Cloud Infrastructure Scanning Assess your cloud-native assets and identify misconfigurations in AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud environments easily.
- Customizable Reporting Create tailored reports in multiple formats like HTML or PDF to share critical security findings with your stakeholders.
- Web Application Scanning Identify vulnerabilities in your web applications and APIs to prevent common attacks like SQL injection and cross-site scripting.
- External Surface Discovery Find and map your internet-facing assets to understand what an attacker sees when looking at your organization.
Wiz Features
- Agentless Scanning. Connect your cloud accounts in minutes via API to get full visibility without installing or managing any software agents.
- Wiz Security Graph. Visualize how vulnerabilities, identities, and misconfigurations correlate to identify the most dangerous attack paths in your environment.
- Vulnerability Management. Detect software flaws across your entire fleet of virtual machines and containers with continuous, automated scanning.
- Compliance Monitoring. Track your status against frameworks like PCI, SOC2, and HIPAA with automated reports and real-time configuration checks.
- Infrastructure as Code Scanning. Fix security issues early in the development cycle by scanning your Terraform and CloudFormation templates before they deploy.
- Cloud Detection and Response. Monitor your environment for active threats and suspicious behavior to respond quickly to potential security incidents.
Pricing Comparison
Tenable Nessus Pricing
- Scan up to 16 IP addresses
- High-speed accurate scanning
- Community support access
- Standard vulnerability assessment
- Free for educators and students
- Everything in Essentials, plus:
- Unlimited IP address scanning
- Advanced support access
- Configuration audits
- Live Results analysis
- Customizable reporting
Wiz Pricing
Pros & Cons
Tenable Nessus
Pros
- Extremely high accuracy with very low false-positive rates
- Massive library of plugins updated daily for new threats
- Easy to set up and run your first scan quickly
- Detailed remediation instructions help you fix issues faster
Cons
- Annual subscription cost is high for small businesses
- Interface can feel dated compared to newer cloud platforms
- Reporting customization requires a learning curve to master
Wiz
Pros
- Fast setup with immediate visibility across cloud accounts
- Reduces alert fatigue by prioritizing critical risk combinations
- Excellent visualization of complex attack paths and dependencies
- Comprehensive coverage of multi-cloud and Kubernetes environments
Cons
- Premium pricing reflects its enterprise-grade feature set
- Initial learning curve to master the graph query language
- Requires high-level permissions for initial API integration