Nessus vs McAfee Vulnerability Management

[cmerkel at gmail.com (Chris Merkel)]

Keep in mind that if you want to compare apples to apples, it should be
Tenable Security Center vs. McAffee, assuming that you're in a large
environment. Remediation workflow is important. If you're just a small group
doing one-off scans, Nessus is ok.

My recommendation, in addition to credentialed scans, is to look at
"non-core" products, and see which one does a better job at detecting
vulnerabilities - odds are that they're both going to detect missing patches
to Windows and Linux distros.

When I was doing an eval (didn't test McAffee) - I found that some other
"magic quadrant" scanners couldn't find CVSS 10 vulnerabilities in things
like vSphere, Tivoli products, IBM DB2, Trend Anti-Virus, IBM RSA/HP rILO
cards, etc - obviously if you have a remote exploit in your backup agent,
database, ILO or AV, that's really bad news.

In addition, look to see who does a better job with auditing things like
Oracle, SQL server, Exchange, Domino, etc.

When it comes down to it, you have to have a solid, highly comprehensive
test plan, putting the scanners against systems in your environment with
known vulnerabilities.

Hope that helps.

(Full Disclosure: I'm a Tenable Security Center customer and recently did
about 3 months of testing on various enterprise VA products. But don't take
my word on it - every environment is different and each VA product has
coverage strengths and weaknesses - don't just go with Nessus because it's
what you know best - that's not a smart approach. )

- Chris Merkel

On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 1:57 PM, subzer0girl <subzer0girl at gmail.com> wrote:

> I need a little help convincing the purchasing people that I need Nessus.
> They are suggesting McAfee Vulnerability Management is a viable
> alternative.  I want to stick with Nessus since that is what I have
> experience with.  I've googled for a comparison of the two products but
> haven't found anything of value. Does anyone have experience with how the
> two products compare ?
>
> Any help would be appreciated
>
> Sandy
>
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-- 
- Chris Merkel
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