--- question: "Which tool is best for vulnerability scanning?" title: "Which Tool Is Best for Vulnerability Scanning" seoTitle: "Best Vulnerability Scanning Tools Compared" summary: "There is no single best vulnerability scanner; the right tool depends on what you are scanning. Nessus is the long-standing industry standard for network and host scanning, Qualys VMDR and Rapid7 InsightVM serve large enterprise fleets, OpenVAS (Greenbone) is the main open source option, and Intruder is a startup-friendly SaaS scanner. For a startup working toward SOC 2, the practical answer is usually a cloud-native scanner such as AWS Inspector or Microsoft Defender for Cloud plus dependency scanning with GitHub Dependabot or Snyk, because auditors check for a documented vulnerability management process with regular scans and remediation tracking, not for a specific brand." publishedAt: "2026-08-22" keywords: - "best vulnerability scanning tool" - "vulnerability scanner comparison" - "Nessus vs OpenVAS vs Qualys" - "vulnerability scanning for SOC 2" pillar: "SOC 2 Tools and Platforms" faqs: - question: "Is OpenVAS good enough for SOC 2?" answer: "Yes. No SOC 2 auditor requires a specific scanner brand. OpenVAS satisfies the requirement as long as you can show a documented vulnerability management process: regular scan reports, severity ratings, and records that findings were remediated within your stated timelines. The gap with commercial tools is coverage breadth and reporting convenience, not audit acceptability." - question: "How often should you run vulnerability scans?" answer: "Quarterly is the common minimum bar auditors and security questionnaires expect, and monthly or continuous scanning is better. Cloud-native scanners like AWS Inspector run continuously by default, which makes the cadence question disappear. Whatever cadence you pick, write it into your vulnerability management policy and be able to show scans actually happened on that schedule." - question: "Is vulnerability scanning required for SOC 2?" answer: "Not by name. SOC 2 requires that you identify and manage vulnerabilities as part of the Trust Services Criteria, and in practice nearly every auditor expects to see scan reports and remediation records as the evidence for that. A SOC 2 report without any scanning activity behind it would draw questions from both the auditor and the customers reading the report." - question: "What is the difference between vulnerability scanning and penetration testing?" answer: "A vulnerability scan is automated and broad: software checks your systems against a database of known issues on a schedule, typically monthly or continuously. A penetration test is human-led and deep: a tester spends days or weeks attempting to exploit and chain findings the way an attacker would, then writes a report. Auditors and enterprise buyers treat them as separate requirements, so a scan report cannot stand in for a pentest and a pentest does not replace ongoing scanning." - question: "Are free vulnerability scanners good enough for compliance?" answer: "Often yes, especially for a small SaaS company. Auditors evaluate the vulnerability management process, meaning documented scan cadence, severity triage, and remediation records, and they do not credit a license fee. OpenVAS, GitHub Dependabot, and the free tiers of cloud-native scanners can all produce acceptable evidence. The exception is enterprise customers whose security questionnaires occasionally name commercial tools, in which case the questionnaire, not the audit, drives the purchase." --- ## 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](/solutions/soc-2); it does not run scans itself, and it is not a replacement for any tool in the table above.