Nessus vs Wireshark

CyLock EVA

Orca Security

ManageEngine Vulnerability Manager Plus

CyLock’s AntiHacker is a software developed by our researchers to allow you to analyse corporate IT security from a hacker’s point of view and proposes the most effective remedies to avoid possible attacks.

Orca Security is the industry-leading Cloud Security Platform that identifies, prioritizes, and remediates security risks and compliance issues across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud and Kubernetes. 

ManageEngine Vulnerability Manager Plus is a prioritization-driven threat and vulnerability management software for enterprises that offers built-in patching.

Nessus is a cloud-based vulnerability assessment solution designed to help security practitioners identity and resolve vulnerabilities to protect organizations against various security risks. It comes with pre-defined templates which can be customized by users to scan for critical vulnerabilities.

Activity Dashboard

Alerts/Notifications

Application Security

Assessment Management

Asset Discovery

Audit Management

Audit Trail

Compliance Management

Compliance Tracking

Monitoring

Network Scanning

Network Security

Patch Management

Penetration Testing

Policy Management

Real-Time Analytics

Real-Time Data

Real-Time Monitoring

Real-Time Reporting

Reporting/Analytics

Reporting & Statistics

Risk Analysis

Risk Assessment

Runtime Container Security

Threat Intelligence

Threat Protection

Vulnerability Assessment

Vulnerability Management

Vulnerability Protection

Vulnerability Scanning

Vulnerability/Threat Prioritization

Web-Application Security

Web Scanning

Website Crawling

Proprietary

Nessus

Windows

Linux

Acunetix

Qualys Cloud Platform

Intruder

Basic

Plan 2

Plan 3

Offensive Security Consultant

performance is pretty poor, licensing experience is poor, does not normalize scope data, does not always show its work in scan output, lots of typos in finding text, filtering does not work as well as one would hope

Vulnerability Assessor

Accuracy of scans are good and detects most vulnerabilities like SQL injection, XSS, and other misconfigurations.

Automated scans are very friendly to setup and compares scope to OWASP top 10 vulnerabilities.

Associate Professor

Together with Nmap, Nessus gives a much better penetration testing and vulnerability analysis of networks and virtualized cloud infrastructures.

Systems Engineer

Sometimes there are limitations in the scan exclusions.

Solid product, minus reporting. But massively overpriced and undermaintained.

Responsable On-Premise and Cloud Infrastructure

Nessus allows you to have vulnerability dashboards and allows rapid remediation

Lead Consultant

Price can be a bit steep for small businesses

Nessus is a must for network security testing and vulnerability analysis.

Sometimes the vulnerability scan is a little too picky.

Owner

I use Nessus for external vulnerabilities.

IT Intern

Lead Security Consultant

User Interface , Scan Profiling , Policy creation is easy and straightforward

Data analyst 

Nessus still has the issue of false positives which is common in most vulnerability scanners whereby nessus detects vulnerabilities that are not present.

Analyst

Nessus proved to be an effective solution for identifying potential security weaknesses and ensuring compliance across our infrastructure.

Senior Software Security Analyst

Also, many false positives can be encountered and then depends on the analyst to interpret and classify each vulnerability along with a more appropriate severity.

nessus is complicated to configure but also is a fairly expensive product

Lead security Engineer

One of the best features is nessus can be easily deployed to air gapped environments without much changes to the environment.

System Admin

Nessus is the state of the art on automating vulnerability scans for networks and infrastructure.

At times the most recent CIS benchmarks may not be available to conduct compliance scans.

I also like the wide variety of plug ins made available by nessus for specific vulnerabilities.

Cyber Securit Analyst

Perfect tool for consultants as you can load it on a laptop and move from client to client.

Nessus has limited reporting and vulnerability management features as compared to other tools.

I like how you get an alert promptly when nessus detects an attack on any of your systems.

CISO

Tenable kept removing core functionsWeak web scanning capabilities

Reporting is a little lacking and can do with some rework.

It can be expensive to keep it running for smaller business.

The "Plugin Output" fields help greatly when trying to determine if tests are a false positive, and lends additional credence to your system administrators when you can show them exactly *why* something has been detected as a vulnerability.

Network Security Engineer

I wish there was a way to combine data from multiple scanners into one report or view.

Nessus is easy to use and easy to deploy vulnerability assessment solution available.

Manager

Nessus is #1 Vulnerability scanning tool which I ever seen and also Nessus tool has given  fullest support to get PCIDSS certificate to our organization.

IT Specialist (INFOSEC)

Also, sometimes scans fail with very little information as to why.

Cybersecurity Masters Student and Teaching Assistant

False Positives are present, and its not your only tool to rely for a pentest.

There are no ways to track vulnerabilities or your efforts to monitor them over time; this truly is just a point-in-time view of your environment unless you upgrade to a much more expensive product.  

So if you are expecting to work like any other web app OWASP scanner, its not.

Nessus is still the industry leader in this arena, and the ability for the product to identify vulnerabilities accurately is still the high water mark to beat.  

It is better if nessus professional have option to track an assets progress over the time with vulnerability management features.

Director Of Information Technology

Provides a good overview of vulnerabilities across systems for internal security assessments and audits.

It is relatively easy to use once everything is set up, and it can scan just about anything.

Information Security Analyst

Nessus is one of the best vulnerability scanning tools in the Cyber Security field.

Doctoral Student

For threats that are generally manageable and can easily be detected, Nessus is the to go-to scanner of choice

Director

Number of Plugins available to scan different environments

You can purchase the product according to the size of your network.

Sr. UNIX Systems Admin

Nessus is an industry-standard tool for doing security evaluations.

It is better if they can fine tune the compliance reports.  

Scan Functionality

Implementation

False Positives

Small Business

Reporting

Setup and Deployment

Pricing

Deployment

Corporate Environment

Freelancers

Mid-size Business

Large Enterprises

Tenable Network Security

ManageEngine OpManager

OpManager is an easy-to-use network management product that offers a single console solution to manage the complete IT network of any organization.

PRTG

PRTG monitors your network 24/7 to timely alert you to issues before they become emergencies.

Monitor all the systems, devices, traffic, and applications in your IT infrastructure.

Everything is included with PRTG; there is no need for additional plugins or downloads.

PRTG is a powerful and easy!

Site24x7

Site24x7 is a monitoring solution for DevOps and IT operations for troubleshooting applications, servers and network infrastructure

Wireshark is a network monitoring software designed to help commercial enterprises, non-profit organizations, government agencies, and educational institutions capture and analyze network traffic across various communication channels. It lets IT teams read live data from various types of networks.

Bandwidth Monitoring

Configuration Management

Dashboard

Data Visualization

IP Address Monitoring

Network Analysis

Network Monitoring

Performance Metrics

Remote Monitoring & Management

Server Monitoring

Service Level Agreement (SLA) Management

Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)

SSL Security

Threshold Alerts

Troubleshooting

Uptime Reporting

Virtualization

Web Traffic Reporting

Open Source

Wireshark

Web-based

Information Security and Compliance Analyst

In terms of alerting us to events and incidents, analysing network packets, troubleshooting, and resolving packet issues it has proved to be excellent.   Although it is an open-source product, its quality and performance have never been compromised.

IT Specialist

Wireshark is a good network tool that lets you see in real-time network traffic and things such as packet loss and transmission.

Tier Two

The number of times it has saved me when someone put a wireless access point on an unknown IP or after it has been factory reset by helping me find the new IP and get remoted in makes it invaluable.

Technical Support Expert

Wireshark mainly helps for packet tracing to see the connectivity of servers and endpoints.

Technical support engineer

With proper timestamp we can easily verify bugs , packet entry and ethernet packets.

Technical Support Engineer

Perfect packet capturing tool to see the packet flow and analyse the data flow.

cyber security analyst

It's ability to capture and analyze real-time network traffic

Cyber security Researcher

Wireshark is one of the best tool that help in Deep packet inspection and Malware analysis by capturing the network traffic comparer to other products and its free tool.

The filtering mechanism in Wireshark is so practical where you can filter packets based on the different protocol fields such as the source IP, destination IP, source port, destination port, TCP control bits (Syn, Fin, Ack, etc.).

The main features I really enjoy in Wireshark is its ability to demonstrate the encapsulated payloads and headers at the different layers: Messages at the Application layer, Segments at the Transport Layer, Packets/Datagrams at the Network/IP layer, and Frames at the DataLink layer.

Having a stable packet analyzer for my IT team is truly a must and Wire Shark hits home

TECHNICAL SUPPORT

Great Software that enables one get a detail structure of the Network right from knowing Devices connected on the network through IP, the interfaces through which they are connecting to the network, Network Flow analysis, Specific IP address Data Capture and filtering, giving a detailed picture.

Senior Field Technician

The amount of data that it captures and how it is listed is extremely helpful.

Threat Researcher

The platform is very reliable for traffic monitoring and to get reports for investigations.

Assistant Professor

We also use Wireshark to better understand network security protocols such as Diffie-Hellman, Kerberos, IPSec, SSL/TLS to name few.

Landscaper/White Hat Pen Tester

All in one tool essential for numerous purposes in cyber security. Whether it's Kali Linux, windows, or Mac Os, Wireshark is one of the most powerful tools a cyber security analyst uses in the industry.

Network Administrator

It's a bit of a learning curve, but that said there is a lot of information out there to find the needs best suited for you.

Proper format of input IP data needs to get the results.

Powerful tool for security analysis , troublehsooting.

It gives the information in proper details to work and debug the cause.

Wireshark can operate in the promiscuous mode and can sniff data at the different available interfaces.

AEZOWIE INFOTECH SERVICES PVT. LTD.

Its comprehensive feature set, user-friendly interface, and extensive protocol support make it a go-to tool for professionals and enthusiasts alike.

It's ease of use and implementation across our IT Landscape are two major positive points of the application.  

Wireshark offers a highly positive experience for users involved in network analysis, troubleshooting, and security auditing.

Nessus vs Wireshark Comparison (2026)

Nessus

Wireshark

Overview

Video & Screenshots

Pricing

User reviews

Key features

Integrations

Alternatives