Wiz Loves OPENVAS! Our Take on Being a Top Vulnerability Management Tool of 2026
When Wiz recently published its roundup of the Best Vulnerability Management Tools for 2026, something caught our attention, but didn’t surprise us: OPENVAS received a top spot and a great review. Wiz describes OPENVAS as the “open-source equivalent” to commercial vulnerability scanners. The review calls OPENVAS “the most comprehensive coverage available in a single platform”. We’ll take the compliment! But there are still a few points we would like to contest because they don’t quite capture the full Greenbone story.
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Grabbing a copy of OPENVAS SCAN with a free two-week trial of the OPENVAS ENTERPRISE FEED is a surefire way to gain the deepest insight into where software vulnerabilities exist in your organization’s Linux infrastructure.
What Wiz Reviewed
Wiz reviewed Greenbone’s free community edition of OPENVAS SCAN, which is appropriate for a review of open-source software (OSS) tools. However, the community edition comes with the limits of a free tier. OPENVAS is also available as an end-to-end enterprise product. Let’s review the differences:
Open Source and Enterprise: Greenbone Is “Best of Both Worlds”
One of Greenbone’s biggest advantages is that organizations do not have to choose between open-source transparency and enterprise-grade deployment. Greenbone offers both sides of the equation: the transparency and flexibility associated with open-source software and purpose-built enterprise solutions designed for operational security environments. The openness matters. Source-code transparency provides visibility into the OPENVAS SCAN technology. This visibility simplifies security auditing and independent security testing.
The Greenbone ecosystem includes multiple community edition deployment options. Users can run the Community Containers, install natively on Kali Linux, or build components directly from source. But community deployments are only a small part of the Greenbone product offering. Greenbone provides optimized enterprise solutions for organizations that need commercially supported vulnerability management products. Our product line includes enterprise virtual appliances and dedicated hardware appliances.
You Don’t Need to Run Nmap Separately
Wiz correctly highlights Nmap as a robust discovery tool, noting that security practitioners rely on the tool for port scanning. But users don’t need to feed Nmap results into our scanner. Nmap scanning is already integrated into OPENVAS SCAN. Our scan workflow performs robust port discovery before vulnerability assessment.
OPENVAS SCAN includes configurable options for port detection that security teams can tune according to the requirements of the target environment. There is no need to stitch together separate service-discovery and vulnerability detection operations.
More Control Means a More Sophisticated Configuration
In addition to saying that OPENVAS has a “user-friendly console for intuitive control”, Wiz also claims that OPENVAS demands a steep learning curve. There may be some truth to that observation. On the flip side, OPENVAS SCAN is a sophisticated security platform with flexible features. Vulnerability management itself is sophisticated. Giving security teams more options for scan control inevitably introduces more flexibility than a scanner built around a simplified workflow.
OPENVAS SCAN provides granular scan controls and flexible options for configuring targets, scanning behavior, schedules, credentials, results, and operational workflows. For organizations that want automation or integration with virtually any other IT platform, the Greenbone Management Protocol (GMP) and Open Scanner Protocol (OSP) APIs enable extensive programmatic control over OPENVAS SCAN.
Yes, mastering a flexible security platform requires some learning. However, the payoff is that defenders can leverage versatility across very different operational contexts.
Prioritization Goes Beyond Finding CVEs
Finding vulnerabilities is only the first part of vulnerability management. Wiz correctly states that prioritization requires more context than raw severity alone. OPENVAS SCAN already provides important prioritization data, including CVSS severity information, EPSS exploit-probability scores, and CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) status, helping defenders move from “What vulnerabilities exist?” toward “Which vulnerabilities deserve attention first?” And more risk prioritization tools are on the way!
Without giving away the details just yet, Greenbone will soon be announcing new risk-management capabilities designed to give defenders even better tools to understand, organize, and prioritize vulnerability risk.
Industry Leading Coverage and a Growing List of Scanning Tools
Wiz claims that OPENVAS has “limited coverage, scanning only basic endpoints and networks”. However, Greenbone’s subscription-based detection feed, the OPENVAS ENTERPRISE FEED, provides industry-leading vulnerability detection. Meanwhile, the OPENVAS COMMUNITY FEED provides extensive security coverage for Linux environments and many other widely deployed open-source applications and software stacks.
OPENVAS SCAN is not simply performing a network-surface sweep of a few endpoints. Authenticated scanning delves deep into user space to detect vulnerabilities that cannot be identified from the outside. Containers must also be checked for vulnerabilities in the same way as other IT assets. OPENVAS SCAN can perform container image scans to audit a single container image, multiple container images, or a complete registry.
Since its founding in 2009, Greenbone AG has continuously maintained and advanced the Open Vulnerability Assessment System, better known as OpenVAS. As a result, the two names have become closely linked: mention Greenbone, and OpenVAS is often the first thing that comes to mind. Formerly known as the Greenbone Vulnerability Manager (GVM), OPENVAS SCAN has continued to evolve as well. Important feature upgrades include agent-based and hybrid scanning to complement the traditional agentless authenticated scanning model, container image scanning. Also, a new generation of risk-management capabilities are almost ready to hit the center stage. Greenbone’s product line is also expanding with OPENVAS SECURITY INTELLIGENCE, a new enterprise tool for centralized management, risk analysis, and remediation prioritization across distributed OPENVAS SCAN environments.
Yes, Windows and Linux, but So Much More!
Wiz also claims that OPENVAS is “primarily optimized for Linux and Windows operating systems.” But, that description overlooks how flexible Greenbone deployment actually is. OPENVAS SCAN can be deployed across a range of virtualization environments including, Oracle VirtualBox for macOS and type-1 hypervisors such as VMware ESXi, Proxmox Virtual Environment and Nutanix AHV.
Our supported hypervisor options include:
- Microsoft Hyper-V, version 8.0 or higher
- VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi), version 7.0 or higher
- VMware Workstation Pro, version 17.0 or higher
- Oracle VirtualBox, version 7.0 or higher
- Huawei FusionCompute, version 8.0
- Proxmox Virtual Environment (VE), version 8.0 or higher
- Nutanix AHV, version 6.8 or higher
Already running Proxmox VE or Nutanix AHV? See how OPENVAS SCAN covers your hypervisor.
A Concluding Thanks to Wiz!
Even Wiz loves Greenbone! Here at Greenbone, we appreciate being listed among the leading vulnerability-management technologies for 2026. The Wiz review recognizes what many of our customers and users already know: OPENVAS is the pinnacle of industry-leading, open-source vulnerability-management platforms. We are also happy to help clarify a few parts of that picture.
Let’s be clear: Greenbone’s open-source transparency goes hand-in-hand with top-notch enterprise deployment. Vulnerability management extends far beyond default scan configurations and push-button scans. Sure, OPENVAS SCAN has these. But powerful configuration options should not be mistaken for unnecessary complexity. Greenbone’s existing risk-prioritization tools support defenders with core risk metrics after vulnerabilities have been discovered.
Be on the lookout for several new features that will extend the number of options that defenders have for prioritized risk-driven vulnerability management and exposure management! Contact Greenbone’s sales team to discuss how enterprise-grade compliance scanning with OPENVAS SCAN can best support your organization’s regulatory and security governance requirements.
Start Your Free Trial
Grabbing a copy of OPENVAS SCAN with a free two-week trial of the OPENVAS ENTERPRISE FEED is a surefire way to gain the deepest insight into where software vulnerabilities exist in your organization’s Linux infrastructure.
Joseph has had a varied and passionate background in IT and cyber security since the late 1980s. His early technical experience included working on an IBM PS/2, assembling PCs and programming in C++.
He also pursued academic studies in computer and systems engineering, anthropology and an MBA in technology forecasting.
Joseph has worked in data analytics, software development and, in particular, enterprise IT security. He specialises in vulnerability management, encryption and penetration testing.
