Tenable Nessus

Nessus is Tenable's vulnerability scanner, and its place in a PCI programme is specific rather than general: PCI DSS requires regular internal and external vulnerability testing, and a scanner is what produces that evidence. It is not a compliance platform and will not assemble an attestation on its own.

Tenable positions the wider portfolio as exposure management, spanning vulnerability management, cloud security, OT security, identity security, web application scanning, attack surface management and patch management, with compliance named as a use case in its own right. For a merchant whose card environment includes on-premise infrastructure or OT, that breadth is relevant, because scanning coverage must extend to everything in scope. Anyone comparing this against Vanta or Drata should understand they solve adjacent problems, and larger programmes typically run both.