Top 10 Best Network Security Audit Software of 2026

Nessus, developed by Tenable, is a leading vulnerability scanner designed for comprehensive network security audits, identifying vulnerabilities across networks, cloud infrastructure, web applications, databases, and operating systems. It uses a vast library of plugins to detect thousands of known issues, misconfigurations, and compliance violations, providing prioritized risk scores and remediation guidance. As an industry standard tool, it supports automated scanning, detailed reporting, and integration with other security platforms for efficient vulnerability management.

Qualys VMDR (Vulnerability Management, Detection and Response) is a cloud-native platform designed for continuous discovery, assessment, prioritization, and remediation of vulnerabilities across networks, endpoints, containers, and cloud assets. It performs deep scans to identify security weaknesses, misconfigurations, and compliance gaps, making it a powerhouse for network security audits. The tool leverages AI-driven risk scoring (TruRisk) to focus on high-impact threats and integrates with patch management and EDR for automated responses.

Rapid7 InsightVM is a comprehensive vulnerability management platform that automates the discovery, assessment, prioritization, and remediation of security vulnerabilities across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments. It excels in network security audits by performing deep scans of assets, providing risk-based scoring that factors in exploitability and business impact, and offering detailed reporting for compliance and remediation tracking. With seamless integrations into SIEM, ITSM, and orchestration tools, it enables proactive security operations for enterprises.

OpenVAS, developed by Greenbone Networks, is a full-featured open-source vulnerability scanner that detects security vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and compliance issues across networks, hosts, and applications. It operates as the core scanning engine within the Greenbone Vulnerability Management (GVM) framework, supporting authenticated and unauthenticated scans, custom policies, and detailed reporting via a web-based interface. Ideal for regular security audits, it leverages a vast, community-maintained database of Network Vulnerability Tests (NVTs) updated multiple times daily.

Nmap is a free, open-source network scanner renowned for its capabilities in network discovery, security auditing, and vulnerability assessment. It performs host discovery, port scanning, service version detection, OS fingerprinting, and executes scripts via the Nmap Scripting Engine (NSE) to identify potential vulnerabilities. As a cornerstone tool in cybersecurity, it's used for reconnaissance in penetration testing and compliance audits.

Wireshark is a free, open-source network protocol analyzer widely used for capturing and inspecting network traffic in real-time or from saved capture files. In network security audits, it enables deep packet inspection to detect anomalies, malware communications, unauthorized access, and protocol violations. Its extensive protocol support and filtering capabilities make it a staple tool for forensic analysis and troubleshooting security incidents.

Suricata is a free, open-source network threat detection engine that functions as an Intrusion Detection System (IDS), Intrusion Prevention System (IPS), and Network Security Monitor. It performs deep packet inspection on network traffic, matching it against thousands of community-sourced rules to detect malware, exploits, and anomalies for comprehensive security auditing. With support for high-speed networks, Lua scripting, file extraction, and JSON logging, it enables detailed analysis and integration with SIEM tools.

Snort is a widely-used open-source network intrusion detection and prevention system (NIDS/NIPS) that performs real-time analysis of network traffic to detect and log malicious activity. It uses a flexible, rule-based language to inspect packets against predefined signatures, enabling identification of exploits, vulnerabilities, and anomalies for security auditing purposes. Deployable in various modes including sniffer, logger, IDS, and IPS, Snort supports integration with other tools for comprehensive network monitoring.

Zeek (formerly Bro) is an open-source network analysis framework designed for security monitoring and audit, providing deep visibility into network traffic through protocol parsing and event generation. It analyzes traffic in real-time or from captures, producing detailed logs for anomalies, malware, and policy violations without relying solely on signatures. Highly scriptable, Zeek enables custom detection logic and integrates seamlessly with SIEMs and other tools for comprehensive network audits.

Wazuh is an open-source unified XDR and SIEM platform that delivers comprehensive security monitoring, including host-based intrusion detection (HIDS), network intrusion detection (NIDS via Suricata), log analysis, file integrity monitoring, vulnerability detection, and compliance auditing. It deploys lightweight agents on endpoints, servers, containers, and cloud instances to collect and analyze data centrally using the Elastic Stack. For network security audits, it excels at correlating logs, detecting misconfigurations, assessing vulnerabilities, and generating reports for standards like PCI DSS, NIST, and GDPR.