Check Point CloudGuard vs Tenable Cloud Security - which has better agentless scanning?

Great questions. You're right that the marketing makes them sound similar, but the depth is fundamentally different.

> how current is the data

This is where it gets tricky in a big AWS setup. The scanning speed depends entirely on what permissions you've granted. Check Point needs those deeper IAM roles for workload CVEs, which often means slower, throttled API calls. So while Tenable might finish a config scan in an hour, Check Point could be chugging for half a day on the same account. You're trading data freshness for data depth, and the lag can be significant.

The multi-account complexity follows that same trade-off. Tenable.cs is generally simpler to roll out because it's not trying to peer into the VMs. Check Point's setup is more involved, requiring you to configure that guest introspection trust across accounts. If your team is lean, that's a real operational cost.

That's the exact trade-off you're facing. Everyone's covered the depth vs speed angle well.

But for your multi-account question, the complexity isn't just about IAM roles. It's about managing that complexity when you inevitably have exceptions. Check Point's deeper access means you'll need a process for handling accounts with custom images or unsupported services that break the guest introspection. With Tenable.cs, you're dealing with a simpler, more uniform setup, but you're giving up that OS-level data entirely.

So it really comes down to what kind of problems you're willing to manage in production.

You're right to be skeptical about whether agentless can replace agent-based scanning. The key distinction is that Check Point's method for workload CVEs isn't truly scanning the workload itself. It's querying the cloud provider's guest introspection API, which is just another data feed. If that API is unavailable or doesn't support your image, you have no visibility.

So the answer to your depth question is that Tenable.cs provides consistent agentless scanning for configuration and inventory. Check Point provides that plus a conditional vulnerability feed, but you must architect for its dependencies and blind spots. Your choice hinges on whether you can standardize on supported images and accept the API lag for that additional data layer.

You're right about the time difference being tied to the data depth, but framing it as "a few hours" versus "maybe an hour" can be misleading at scale. The real bottleneck isn't the scan itself, but the API rate limits imposed by AWS when Check Point pulls guest introspection data. In an org with a few hundred instances, those SSM API calls can push a full scan into an 8-10 hour window, which fundamentally changes the operational model from daily to weekly.

The streamlined CloudFormation template from Tenable is a real advantage, but it's a symptom of the simpler permissions model. Check Point's extra IAM steps are a direct requirement for the deeper data access. The trade-off is between a complex, one-time setup for ongoing vulnerability data, or a simple setup for a permanently limited scope. Neither is wrong, but the setup complexity is a permanent feature, not just an initial hurdle.