Bitsight vs CyberGRX product overview
Learn more about the products and how they compare.
Overview
As outsourcing significant business functions is now common practice for most organizations, major third-party data breaches are rapidly taking over news headlines.
Ponemon Institute and IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach Report found the average cost of a breach has increased from $370,000 to $4.35 million, with third-party involvement listed as one of the main reasons. An eSentire surveyfrom the same year highlights that 44% of firms surveyed have experienced a significant data breach caused by a third-party vendor.
With Gartner reporting 60% of organizations as having 1000+ third-party relationships, effectively managing the cybersecurity risks they create and practicing vendor due diligence proves increasingly difficult.
Information security teams often also rely on manual risk reporting methods which are time and labor-intensive. Many organizations are now turning to automated third-party risk management (TPRM) solutions that automate data breach detection capabilities, provide real-time insights, and streamline remediation workflows.
We assess three TPRM solutions, BitSight, CyberGRX, and UpGuard, to help you make an informed decision before investing in the right solution for your needs.
BitSight Overview
BitSight Technologies is a Cambridge, MA-based company that aims to quantify the external cybersecurity posture of organizations using publicly accessible data.
BitSight’s security ratings are used by security and cybersecurity riskprofessionals to conduct due diligence research for Vendor Risk Management programs, private equity, M&A activities, and more.
Additionally, these security ratings are used for attack surface analytics, industry benchmarking, and the assessment of fourth-party risk.

BitSight UI. Source: bitsight.com
CyberGRX Overview
CyberGRX is based in Denver, Colorado in the United States and founded by Fred Kneip in 2015. CyberGRX provides enterprises and their third-parties with a cost-effective and scalable approach to third-party cyber risk management.
It does this by collecting data and cyber risk assessments in a structured format and then sharing them on their information exchange platform. This allows assessors to quickly access information about a vendor while reducing the operational overhead for the vendor by reducing the number of similar questionnaires they need to fill out.
In December 2019, CyberGRX announced it had raised $40 million in Series D funding led by ICONIQ Capital.

CyberGRX UI. Source: www.cybergrx.com
UpGuard Overview
UpGuard is a third-party risk and attack surface management platform that helps global organizations prevent data breaches, monitor third-party vendors, and improve their security posture. UpGuard’s platform uses proprietary security ratings, data leak detection capabilities, and remediation workflows to proactively identify security exposures. UpGuard’s all-in-one third-party risk and attack surface management software intelligently groups risks into six categories: website risks, email security, network security, phishing & malware, reputation risk, and brand protection.
Usability and the learning curve
Minimizing the amount of time and effort in learning to use a new solution is a critical aspect of delivering on any value proposition.
BitSight, CyberGRX, and UpGuard offer their services via SaaS and are accessible from web-based platforms that can help users monitor and manage vendor risks.
BitSight: Provides views of identified vendor risks enabling detailed reporting of vendors.
CyberGRX: Risks detailed on point-in-time vendor assessment coupled with continuous monitoring of inherent risk, threat intelligence, and risk scoring. The exchange model forces more frequent point in time assessments, as many as 2-3 times each year.
UpGuard: High-level summation of risk with the ability to drill down into precise technical details. Each risk is prioritized based on extensive research conducted by the in-house security team, and where possible remediation and protection suggestions are provided.
Capabilities
BitSight, CyberGRX, and UpGuard all help organizations stay informed about their vendors’ information security risks as part of a third-party risk management (TPRM) program.
Community support
Keeping informed on product updates and the latest cyber security developments is paramount, with new vulnerabilities and cyber threats emerging daily.
Customers need up-to-date resources and relevant insights to stay ahead of the curve and protect their organizations from emerging cyber risks.
The frequency of publication and presence of community engagement is a key indicator of a company’s mission, focus, and investment in its users.
BitSight, CyberGRX, and UpGuard offer comprehensive online resources to educate and inform customers.
BitSight: BitSight maintains regular blog posts and webinars covering security incidents, feature updates, and industry developments.
These efforts, along with an extensive network of partnerships, provide the resources security professionals need to identify the best security practices for their program.
CyberGRX: CyberGRX offers extensive community support sharing best platform and program practices via regularly updated podcasts, webinars, whitepapers, and strategic partnerships.
UpGuard: UpGuard Summit brings together a community of security leaders from leading companies, explores the future of security, and helps businesses stay secure.
The UpGuard cybersecurity and risk management blog is updated four times a week and the breach research blog has uncovered and secured some of the largest data breaches.
UpGuard’s free weekly Breach Newsletter informs 20,000+ subscribers of the latest global data breaches.
Release rate
Technology is always changing. New vulnerabilities are added to CVE on a daily basis, and attackers are constantly finding new zero-day exploits.
The speed at which a security platform can incorporate changes determines how well it can respond to new threats and customer requests.
Additionally, they should continue to update, adjust, and improve their threat detection methodology to reflect changes to the threat landscape.
BitSight: BitSight maintains regular blog posts and webinars covering security incidents, feature updates, and industry developments.
These efforts, along with an extensive network of partnerships, provide the resources security professionals need to identify the best security practices for their program.
CyberGRX: CyberGRX makes product releases throughout the year as needed and documents release notes monthly to help users understand and make use of beneficial changes.
UpGuard: UpGuard has adopted DevOps principles internally to develop, test, and release software continuously, ensuring fast, consistent, and safe releases.
UpGuard has a regular release rate every two weeks, with all features, changes, and improvements listed under UpGuard Release Notes.
Pricing and support
Cyber risk platforms can be expensive and the common use of opaque pricing policies often takes power away from the purchaser. With most services offering tiered licensing options and add-ons, finding a solution that fits your needs and budget can prove more difficult without transparent pricing.
BitSight: Bitsight’s pricing details are not publicly available.
CyberGRX: CyberGRX lists typical engagements as starting at around $120,000 USD. This includes validated assessments data, and unlimited access to the CyberGRX Exchange.
UpGuard: UpGuard has a fully transparent and publicly accessible pricing model which you can view here. If you have any questions, please email sales@upguard.com.
API and extensibility
Accessing the information in a cyber risk product outside of its graphical interface is important for integrated business strategies and consolidating data to a preferred system.
BitSight, CyberGRX, and UpGuard offer APIs.
BitSight: BitSight offers the ability for customers to extend security ratings through a Developer API. ** CyberGRX:** CyberGRX offers a fully functional bidirectional API.
UpGuard: Offers a standard API to pull data from UpGuard’s platform into other enterprise applications.
Third-party integrations
APIs are useful for technical staff, but not all information security teams have access to developers. In this situation, standard third-party integrations are an essential part of decision-making.
BitSight, CyberGRX, and UpGuard offer integrations into other platforms.
BitSight: Offers integrations with RSA Archer GRC, CyberGRX, OneTrust Vendorpedia, ProcessUnity, MetricStream, and more.
CyberGRX: Integrates with multiple GRC platforms (using connectors), visualization tools, ticketing systems, and SOC tools.
Customers
BitSight: Customers include Optus / Singtel, The University of North Florida, Snam, and PROSA.** **
CyberGRX: Major customers include Medibank Private, Mass Mutual, QBE, Solix, and McAfee.
UpGuard: Major customers across highly regulated sectors include Accenture, New York Stock Exchange, Tech Mahindra, and Morningstar.
Security rating
BitSight: BitSight Security Ratings range on a scale of 250-900 with higher ratings indicating better security performance.
CyberGRX: Provides a quantification of information security posture based on a shared library of point-in-time risk assessments updated on a rotating basis.
UpGuard: Security rating scale of 0-950, ranked as A: 801-950, B: 601-800, C: 401-600, D: 201-400, F: 0-200. You can request your free security rating by clicking here.