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Nagios VS Nessus

Compare Nagios VS Nessus and see what are their differences

Nagios logo Nagios

Complete monitoring and alerting for servers, switches, applications, and services

Nessus logo Nessus

Nessus Professional is a security platform designed for businesses who want to protect the security of themselves, their clients, and their customers.
  • Nagios Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-21
  • Nessus Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-21

Nagios features and specs

  • Extensive Community Support
    Nagios has a large and active user community, which means you can easily find help and resources online. There are numerous plugins and add-ons developed by the community that can extend the functionality of Nagios.
  • Highly Customizable
    Nagios is highly customizable and flexible. It allows you to tailor monitoring to suit your specific needs, including creating custom plugins, modifying configuration files, and integrating with other tools.
  • Comprehensive Monitoring
    Nagios provides detailed monitoring of network services, host resources, and infrastructure systems. This includes the ability to monitor CPU load, disk usage, memory, and more.
  • Alerting and Notification
    Nagios has robust alerting and notification features that ensure you can stay informed of any issues or downtime. Alerts can be sent via email, SMS, or other communication channels.
  • Scalable
    Nagios is scalable and can grow with your organization. It supports a large number of hosts and services, making it suitable for both small and large enterprises.

Possible disadvantages of Nagios

  • Steep Learning Curve
    Nagios can be quite complex to set up and configure, especially for newcomers. The learning curve is steep, requiring time and effort to fully understand and utilize its capabilities.
  • Manual Configuration
    A significant amount of configuration is manual, particularly in the open-source version. This can be time-consuming and prone to human error, especially in larger environments.
  • Interface
    The user interface of Nagios is often considered outdated and less intuitive compared to other modern monitoring tools. The web interface can be difficult to navigate and is not as visually appealing.
  • Performance Issues
    Nagios can experience performance issues, particularly when monitoring a large number of hosts and services. It can become resource-intensive, requiring careful optimization and tuning.
  • Cost of Enterprise Version
    The enterprise version of Nagios, Nagios XI, comes with a significant cost. While it offers additional features, support, and a more user-friendly interface, it might not be affordable for all organizations.

Nessus features and specs

  • Comprehensive Vulnerability Coverage
    Nessus offers an extensive database of vulnerabilities, allowing it to identify a wide array of security issues across different environments, including networks, operating systems, applications, and devices.
  • Regular Updates
    Nessus regularly updates its plugin library to include the latest vulnerabilities, ensuring that it can detect new threats as they emerge.
  • User-Friendly Interface
    The Nessus interface is designed to be intuitive and user-friendly, making it accessible for users of varying technical expertise.
  • Customizable Scans
    Nessus allows users to customize scans to focus on specific areas, devices, or types of vulnerabilities, providing greater flexibility and precision.
  • Extensive Reporting and Analytics
    Nessus offers detailed reporting and analytics capabilities, helping users understand the state of their security posture and prioritize remediation efforts.
  • Automation Capabilities
    Nessus supports the automation of scanning and reporting processes, which helps maintain ongoing security assessments without requiring constant manual intervention.
  • Integration with Other Tools
    Nessus integrates well with other security tools and systems, such as SIEMs, making it a versatile component of a broader security ecosystem.

Possible disadvantages of Nessus

  • Cost
    Nessus can be expensive, particularly for smaller organizations or those with limited budgets, as licensing fees can add up based on the number of assets being scanned.
  • Resource Intensive
    Nessus scans can be resource-intensive, potentially impacting network performance and requiring significant computational resources to conduct thorough assessments.
  • False Positives
    Like many vulnerability scanners, Nessus may sometimes produce false positives, which can lead to unnecessary remediation efforts and wasted resources.
  • Learning Curve
    Despite its user-friendly interface, fully leveraging all of Nessus's advanced features and capabilities can require a significant learning curve.
  • Limited Free Version
    The free version of Nessus, Nessus Essentials, is limited in its capabilities and is intended for individual use or small networks, which may not be sufficient for larger organizations.
  • Potential Over-Reliance
    Organizations might become overly reliant on Nessus for vulnerability management, potentially neglecting other important aspects of a comprehensive security strategy.

Nagios videos

Stop using Nagios - Andy Sykes

More videos:

  • Review - Bernd Erk - Why favour Icinga over Nagios
  • Review - How Nagios XI Works

Nessus videos

LABS 17 Vulnerability Analysis Using the Nessus REVIEW

More videos:

  • Review - What is Nessus? | Explaining vulnerabilities in a Web Application
  • Review - Getting Started with Nessus Vulnerability Scanner - 2018

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Nagios and Nessus)
Monitoring Tools
63 63%
37% 37
Security
0 0%
100% 100
Log Management
100 100%
0% 0
Web Application Security
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Nagios and Nessus

Nagios Reviews

11 Best Nagios Alternatives (Free & Open Source) in 2024
Nagios is an open source network monitoring solution. It helps organizations to identify and resolve IT infrastructure issues. However, Nagios could be difficult integrate into automatic provisioning processes. There are few other issues with Nagios as well. Here, is a curated list of top tools that can replace Nagios. This list consists of paid as well as open-source...
Source: www.guru99.com
The Best Nagios Alternatives for Server, Application and Network Monitoring
Nagios is a very strong system monitoring package but its ability to compete in both the free and paid system monitoring market is frequently challenged. The free tool is very comprehensive. However, the Nagios team has taken away the traffic analysis functions from this, moving them off into a separate paid tool, which puts Nagios Core at a disadvantage when compared to...
The 10 Best Nagios Alternatives in 2024 (Paid and Open-source)
It’s also important to note that Nagios is completely open-source, which means that it’s free to use. However, “free to use” doesn’t mean that it won’t cost you anything. Often, the reason users look for alternatives to tools like Nagios is because of their open-source nature. Self-hosting a tool of this magnitude can be even more expensive than purchasing a SaaS subscription.
Source: betterstack.com
The Best Cacti Monitoring Alternatives
Nagios is free for small environments with seven or fewer nodes and hosts. Its paid version starts at $1995 for the license and is priced per user. There is also a variety of free training options for Nagios available online. Both of Nagios’ paid versions include a free trial.
10 Best Linux Monitoring Tools and Software to Improve Server Performance [2022 Comparison]
Nagios Core is an open-source Linux/Unix systems monitoring and alerting tool that can be extended through custom plugins, providing flexible Linux server monitoring. It remotely executes different plugins (executables or scripts) on your Linux server using the NRPE (Nagios Remote Plugin Executor) add-on, which gives you comprehensive monitoring data, including OS metrics,...
Source: sematext.com

Nessus Reviews

Best Burp Suite Alternatives (Free and Paid) for 2023
The main functions of Nessus are asset discovery, web scanning, prioritization, policy management, and vulnerability assessment. It enables organizations to tailor scans based on individual preferences, ensuring compliance with Center for Internet Security (CIS) benchmarks and other top-notch practices. Security teams can generate reports on various vulnerability types,...
Burp suite alternatives
Nessus is the best alternative choice for burp suite. It is a popular vulnerability scanner software. It can scan a wide range of technologies including operating systems, databases, network devices, web servers, hypervisors, and critical infrastructures. The output of the scan can vary in various formats such as plain text, XML, Latex, and HTML. Nessus provides additional...
Source: www.educba.com
10 Best Tenable Nessus Alternatives For 2021 [Updated List]
Answer: Nessus features a wide product line that includes the Nessus Cloud, Nessus Manager which is suitable for vulnerability management on-premises, Nessus Professional runs scans on client devices, such as a laptop. There is also Nessus Essentials, which is a free version of the tool that caters to general consumers.
Best Nessus Alternatives (Free and Paid) for 2021
Built for security practitioners by security professionals, Nessus Professional is the de-facto industry standard for vulnerability assessment. It was built by Tenable Network Security. Nessus performs point-in-time assessments to help security professionals quickly and easily identify and fix vulnerabilities, including software flaws, missing patches, malware, and...
16 Tresorit Alternatives
Nessus is a flexible and straightforward remote security scanning tool that effectively scans a computer and gives an alert when it discovers some issues. The software is pro-efficiently discovers vulnerabilities that hackers could access your operating system via a connected network. Nessus is the name of pride in delivering services that are always up to the mark. Nessus...

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Nagios and Nessus, you can also consider the following products

Zabbix - Track, record, alert and visualize performance and availability of IT resources

Qualys - Qualys helps your business automate the full spectrum of auditing, compliance and protection of your IT systems and web applications.

Datadog - See metrics from all of your apps, tools & services in one place with Datadog's cloud monitoring as a service solution. Try it for free.

Burp Suite - Burp Suite is an integrated platform for performing security testing of web applications.

NewRelic - New Relic is a Software Analytics company that makes sense of billions of metrics across millions of apps. We help the people who build modern software understand the stories their data is trying to tell them.

OpenVAS - The Open Vulnerability Assessment System (OpenVAS) is a framework of several services and tools...