Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Nessus VS Ossec

Compare Nessus VS Ossec and see what are their differences

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.

Ossec logo Ossec

OSSEC is an Open Source Host-based Intrusion Detection System.
  • Nessus Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-21
  • Ossec Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-23

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.

Ossec features and specs

  • Open Source
    OSSEC is open-source, allowing users to access, modify, and distribute the source code. This flexibility enables customization and adaptability to fit various security needs.
  • Multi-Platform Support
    It supports multiple platforms, including Windows, Linux, macOS, and others, providing versatile security monitoring across different environments.
  • Active Community
    OSSEC has a strong, active community that contributes to continuous improvement, providing plugins, guides, and forums for support.
  • Comprehensive Security Features
    Offers features such as rootkit detection, real-time alerting, and compliance auditing, providing a robust security suite for intrusion detection.
  • Scalability
    Capable of handling large-scale deployments, making it suitable for both small and enterprise-level networks.

Possible disadvantages of Ossec

  • Complex Setup
    Initial setup and configuration of OSSEC can be complex, requiring a certain level of expertise and time to tailor effectively.
  • Limited GUI
    OSSEC lacks a native graphical user interface, which may pose challenges for users who prefer visual tools over command-line interfaces.
  • Performance Overhead
    High resource consumption can occur in large deployments, which may affect performance if the infrastructure is not adequately scaled.
  • Dependency on Security Knowledge
    Effective use of OSSEC requires a good understanding of security principles, meaning it's less accessible for beginners or IT staff without security expertise.
  • Alert Overwhelm
    Can generate a high volume of alerts, leading to potential alert fatigue or difficulty in distinguishing between critical and non-critical notifications.

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

Ossec videos

Intrusion Detection System OSSEC | One Stop Cyber Security

More videos:

  • Review - OSSEC - Installation and configuration Step-By-Step

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Nessus and Ossec)
Security
100 100%
0% 0
Monitoring Tools
88 88%
12% 12
Web Application Security
100 100%
0% 0
Security & Privacy
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 Nessus and Ossec

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...

Ossec Reviews

7 Best Free Open Source SIEM Tools
The OSSEC project is currently maintained by Atomicorp who stewards the free and open-source version and also offers an enhanced commercial version. However, the main pain point of this tool is that it lacks some of the core log management and analysis components of a typical SIEM. This limitation motivated other HIDS solutions like Wazuh to fork OSSEC in order to extend and...
8 Best Open Source SIEM Tools
Wazuh is an open-source SIEM system born from the OSSEC project that you can use for threat detection, prevention, and response. You can also use Wazuh to comply with industry standards and regulations such as PCI DSS, GPG 13, and GDPR. Wazuh ships with an integration with Kibana that makes for an excellent UI for data visualization and analytics. It also ships with an agent...
Source: www.logiq.ai
The Top 14 Free and Open Source SIEM Tools For 2022
Prelude is a universal SIEM system and it collects, normalizes, sorts, aggregates, correlates and reports all security-related events independent of the product brand or licence giving rise to such events. Third-party agents to this tool include Auditd, OSSEC, Suricata, Kismet and ClamAV.
Source: logit.io

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Ossec seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 1 time since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Nessus mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Nessus yet. Tracking of Nessus recommendations started around Mar 2021.

Ossec mentions (1)

  • Securing a Linux server. What else to do?
    I'd take it one step further and install OSSEC as well. It can be configured to run as a local daemon and report suspicious activity, and also intervene. So if somebody is brute-forcing the login on your web page, it'll create a burst of 401s which OSSEC will detect in the logs and block the offender for X minutes/hours. Source: over 3 years ago

What are some alternatives?

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

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

snort - Snort is a free and open source network intrusion prevention system.

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

AlienVault USM (from AT&T Cybersecurity) - AlienVault USM Anywhere delivers powerful threat detection, incident response, and compliance management for cloud, on-premises, and hybrid environments.

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

McAfee Network Security Platform - McAfee Network Security Platform guards all your network-connected devices from zero-day and other attacks, with a cost-effective network intrusion prevention system.