SOC 2 Tools and Platforms
Which tool is best for vulnerability scanning?
Which tool is best for vulnerability scanning?
There is no single best vulnerability scanner. Nessus is the industry standard for network and host scanning, Qualys VMDR and Rapid7 InsightVM dominate enterprise fleets, and OpenVAS is the main open source option. For a startup proving SOC 2, the honest answer is usually none of those: a cloud-native scanner plus dependency scanning covers most of what an auditor will ask about, at a fraction of the cost.
Two different things get called vulnerability scanning
People conflate two distinct categories, and the right tool depends on which one you mean.
Infrastructure scanning probes hosts, networks, and cloud resources for known vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and missing patches. Nessus, Qualys, Rapid7, OpenVAS, and the cloud-native scanners live here.
Dependency and code scanning checks the open source packages and code in your repositories for known CVEs. Snyk and GitHub Dependabot live here. If your product is a SaaS application, this category often surfaces more of your real exposure than a network scan does, because your attack surface is mostly your application and its dependencies rather than a fleet of servers.
A vulnerability management program for a modern cloud company normally needs one tool from each category.
The main options
| Tool | Category | Best for | Pricing model |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nessus (Tenable) | Infrastructure scanner | Teams that want the de facto standard | Commercial, annual license |
| Qualys VMDR | Infrastructure scanner | Large enterprise asset fleets | Commercial, per-asset subscription |
| Rapid7 InsightVM | Infrastructure scanner | Enterprises wanting risk-based prioritization | Commercial, per-asset subscription |
| OpenVAS (Greenbone) | Infrastructure scanner | Budget-constrained teams comfortable self-hosting | Open source; commercial editions exist |
| Intruder | SaaS scanner | Startups that want scanning with minimal setup | Commercial SaaS tiers |
| AWS Inspector | Cloud-native scanner | Workloads running on AWS | Usage-based, billed with AWS |
| Microsoft Defender for Cloud | Cloud-native scanner | Workloads running on Azure | Per-resource subscription |
| Snyk | Dependency and code scanner | Application and container dependencies | Free tier; commercial plans |
| GitHub Dependabot | Dependency scanner | Anyone already on GitHub | Free with GitHub |
The best answer for a startup proving SOC 2
Auditors ask for a documented vulnerability management process with regular scans and remediation tracking. They do not ask for a specific brand. That changes the calculus: an AWS-hosted startup that turns on AWS Inspector and Dependabot has continuous scanning across infrastructure and dependencies for close to nothing, while a Nessus license adds cost without adding anything an auditor will credit.
The commercial scanners earn their price when you have what they were built for: large mixed fleets, on-premise networks, compliance regimes that mandate authenticated scanning, or a security team that lives in the tooling. A 15-person SaaS company has none of that.
What auditors actually check
For SOC 2, the evidence requests around vulnerability management are consistent across audit firms:
- Cadence. Scans on a defined schedule. Quarterly is the common minimum; monthly or continuous is better and increasingly the norm for cloud-native setups.
- Severity SLAs. A written policy stating how fast each severity gets fixed. A typical policy commits to remediating critical findings within 15 days and high findings within 30 days.
- Remediation records. Proof that findings were tracked to closure, or formally risk-accepted with a reason and an owner.
The scanner is the easy part. The part that fails audits is the paper trail connecting scan output to fixes. Screenata tracks scan reports and remediation records as evidence inside a SOC 2 program; it does not run scans itself, and it is not a replacement for any tool in the table above.