BitsightvsWhisticUpGuard

Compare the capabilities and features of Bitsight and Whistic.
Also, see how they stack up against UpGuard.

Compare the capabilities and features of Bitsight and UpGuard. See which solution performs best across a range of categories.

Did you know UpGuard was voted #1 on G2 and has been for over two years?

Bitsight vs Whistic
Bitsight vs UpGuard

See how they compare side-by-side.
General summary
5 stars
UpGuard is an end-to-end third-party risk management platform with best-in-class time-to-value and scalability from initial implementations to beyond. 
UpGuard delivers powerful, integrated tools for automated third-party monitoring, in-depth risk assessment and remediation, and one-click reporting. 
By combining actionable insights with built-in risk management workflows, UpGuard helps organizations maintain comprehensive oversight of their supply chain security posture and equips them with the necessary tools to shut down emerging risks rapidly.
Bitsight is a cybersecurity ratings platform that continuously monitors organizational and vendor security postures. It collects and analyzes data from multiple sources—including botnet and malware intelligence—to offer evidence-based risk insights. Bitsight also integrates with GRC and TPRM workflows, allowing teams to proactively mitigate threats across their extended supply chain. However, Bitsight’s pricing structure can complicate scalability.
Relies on standardized security questionnaires.
Key strengths
UpGuard excels by completing full vendor scans every 24 hours, which provides near real-time visibility into vendor security postures while seamlessly integrating native end-to-end AI-powered vendor assessment workflows.
UpGuard's licensing model and efficient learning curve offer best-in-class time to value and program efficiency.
In addition to risk monitoring, Bitsight employs analytical forecasting to estimate future security trajectories. It integrates with platforms like ServiceNow, JIRA, and PowerBI to suit more advanced workflows. This network of partnerships, coupled with strong institutional acceptance, reinforces Bitsight’s profile with complex organizations.
Key weaknesses
UpGuard's focus on core frameworks like ISO 27001 and NIST offers robust coverage for most security and compliance needs, though organizations requiring highly specialized or region-specific regulations may choose to augment it with dedicated GRC modules. 
Its strengths in cybersecurity and continuous monitoring ensure strong TPCRM capabilities, but those seeking an all-encompassing governance solution (e.g., covering environmental or privacy regulations) might benefit from additional integrations.
Bitsight's pricing structures can quickly escalate operational expenses for TPRM programs and create complicated decisions regarding the extent of risk visibility that can be deployed for vendors within a supply chain. Customers additionally cite attribution challenges for risks and assets within shared IP and cloud environments, which require support request submissions to address. Monitoring and assessment capabilities are also separately licensed, which may increase purchasing complexity and limit end-to-end coverage to several vendors within supply chains.
Usability and learning curve
UpGuard offers best-in-class time to value for initial implementations. 
UpGuard's platform architecture is designed from the ground up to deliver a quick and shallow adoption curve. UpGuard's clean and intuitive interface ensures ease of ongoing operation and rapid pick-up from new staff members as needed.
Bitsight is generally intuitive for professionals familiar with security ratings, with an interface offering clear vendor risk summaries. However, some advanced features require more expertise and time to leverage effectively, particularly when deploying Bitsight's separate modules for monitoring and risk assessments.
Risks detailed on each point-in-time vendor assessment, which means new risks are only detected during the next assessment process. Remediation requests are not available. Their risk assessments are aligned to the VSA questionnaire, CAIQ, SIG, NIST Cybersecurity Framework, CIS Security Controls, and Privacy Shield Framework.
Cyber risk data accuracy
UpGuard's real-time data refresh rate ensures up-to-date and accurate vendor security posture calculations while also allowing users to initiate scans on demand.
Cybersecurity experts manually review all internal and vendor data leaks to remove false positives. Data leak insights are also supported with comprehensive contextualization for targeted and timely remediation responses.
Bitsight is widely recognized for malware and botnet reporting, though attribution to hosting providers or shared IP ranges can lead to accuracy challenges requiring correction support.
Relies on risk assessments which can quickly become out of date as new zero-day exploits are discovered and new IT infrastructure is used. The truth is that questionnaires, much like penetration testing, can be subjective and become inaccurate over time as new security issues emerge. Additionally, Whistic provides no controls for capturing data loss incidents.
Vendor risk management features
UpGuard offers a natively integrated end-to-end workflow addressing the complete Third-party Risk Management lifecycle—from onboarding to risk management and ongoing monitoring.
Bitsight supports third-party monitoring and risk workflows, including vendor onboarding, but relies on a separately licensed module for vendor risk assessments and workflows.
Attack surface management features
UpGuard provides continuous attack surface monitoring, identifying exposed assets, misconfigurations, and vulnerabilities. It maps internet-facing infrastructure, detects risks like expired certificates and open ports, and prioritizes threats for remediation. Clear, actionable insights help organizations reduce exposure and strengthen their external security posture.
Bitsight's External Attack Surface Management module is designed to discover hidden assets, provide detailed digital asset insights, and detect vulnerabilities such as unsupported product versions. .
Security ratings
Uses a proprietary scoring model from 0–950, updated daily, emphasizing current, empirical data. 
UpGuard's objective and transparent approach helps CISOs, security teams, and stakeholders reliably gauge a vendor’s actual security posture in near-real time.
Offers a respected rating system correlated with breach likelihood and is used widely by insurers and financial institutions. Observed security events influence scores, but shared IP misattribution can occasionally skew results.
Customer support
Known for world-class support across all tiers and customer-friendly guidance, UpGuard delivers proactive and prompt engagement to resolve customer issues quickly. Dedicated teams assist with both technical and strategic TPRM challenges.
Bitsight provides reputable support, particularly for large enterprises with dedicated account teams. Smaller organizations may experience less responsiveness and find self-service documentation limited.
Offers a company and product blog.
Workflow automation
UpGuard’s AI-powered Security Profile automatically identifies risks and control gaps, then generates contextualized, point-in-time assessment reports in minutes. It also provides a pre-configured (and adjustable) set of controls for two leading security frameworks: ISO 27001:2022 and NIST CSF 2.0.
Custom notifications simplify tracking of critical events and prompting of important follow-up actions.
The platform also facilitates automatic vendor tiering, labeling, and custom attributes based on questionnaire responses for faster vendor onboarding and improved TPRM scalability.
Bitsight integrates with SOAR platforms, allowing users to automate responses to newly discovered risks. However, advanced automation requirements, such as those addressing Vendor Risk Management workflows, require add-on services or third-party tools for complete automation.
Artificial intelligence features
UpGuard’s AI-powered platform streamlines the entire vendor assessment process.
AI evidence analysis combined with automated scanning immediately uncovers control gaps and risks. Each finding is accompanied by transparent, traceable citations so security teams can quickly verify sources and take action.
AI-generated risk assessment reports, which are typically produced in under a minute, help organizations rapidly communicate risks with stakeholders. This results in faster decision-making, more accurate and consistent reporting, and significantly reduced manual workloads.
Bitsight offers a branded AI capability named Groma. Groma is primarily built to support improved risk scoring, identification and attribution of digital assets, and enhanced criticality classification of risk findings. Bitsight is additionally investing in AI development for TPRM workflows and threat detection capabilities. However, whether this will add to their Groma-branded capability or be released as integrated, separate offerings is unclear.
API and Integrations
4 stars
UpGuard provides a well-documented API enabling custom integrations, webhooks, and automation across common security and GRC tools. Its extensibility is straightforward, designed for rapid deployment and minimal setup friction. UpGuard also connects with over 4,000+ apps through a dedicated Zapier integration.
Streamlines remediation and monitoring by natively integrating with Jira, Service Now, and Slack.
Bitsight integrates with popular platforms like ServiceNow and Splunk, offering APIs for custom reporting and automation. Offers integrations with RSA Archer GRC, CyberGRX, OneTrust Vendorpedia, ProcessUnity, MetricStream, and more.
Integrates with RiskRecon, Active Directory, Okta, and OneLogin.
Purchasing & Licensing Transparency
UpGuard offers a freemium package for monitoring up to 5 vendors.
Also provides free access to an AI-powered vendor questionnaire management tool, Trust Exchange.
Pricing starts at USD 1,599 / month.
A 14-day free trial for paid plans is also available.
Public pricing is not available. Does not publically offer a free trial.
Public pricing information is not available.
Customers
Major customers include The New York Stock Exchange (ICE), Morningstar, TDK, PagerDuty, Hopin, and IAG. 
To learn more, read UpGuard’s customer stories.
Major customers include Optus / Singtel, The University of North Florida, Snam, and PROSA.
Customers include Betterment, Invision, Airbnb, Zynga, and Robinhood
G2 rating
Accurate as of March 2025
4.5, based on 383 reviews. Named a G2 Market Leader for Third Party & Supplier Risk Management Software.
4.6, based on 44 reviews.
4.5, based on 46 reviews.
Security rating
X
950
/ 950
X
950
/ 950
X
950
/ 950

Bitsight vs Whistic product overview

Bitsight vs UpGuard product overview

Learn more about the products and how they compare.

Outsourcing, digitization, and globalization are three of the largest trends in the last 30 years. They've brought new products and services, increased specialization, lower costs, and improved access.

But they've also introduced significant cyber risk. Particularly the risk of data breaches and data leaks. For perspective, a recent study by the Ponemon Institute put the average cost of a data breach at $3.92 million.

The unfortunate truth is third-parties cause a lot of data breaches. That's why cybersecurity and vendor risk management are a top priority for CISOs and senior management alike, even at the Board level.

Governments around the world are enacting laws and regulations to promote and often require third-party cyber risk management programs to identify, assess, mitigate and oversee risks created by vendors, fourth-parties, and customers.

While third-party risk management is business-as-usual for financial services, healthcare, energy, military, and government organizations, the introduction of general data protection laws with extraterritorial application means what were once loosely regulated industries must now develop vendor risk management practices.

In addition, the introduction of mandatory data breach notification requirements means the reputational impact of inadequate vendor and cybersecurity risk management practices is greater.

Today, security teams are expected to be able to translate technical details like security postures, cybersecurity risk assessments, vendor questionnaires, and information security policies into terms their most important non-technical stakeholders can understand, e.g. Board members and regulators.

The good news is there are third-party risk management tools that can help you do exactly that. The issue is it's hard to decide on which ones to assess, let alone what criteria to assess them against.  

That's why we wrote this post to provide you with a clear comparison between BitSight, Whistic, and UpGuard, so you can make an informed decision and choose the tool that is right for you.  

BitSight Technologies 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
BitSight UI. Source: bitsight.com

Whistic Overview

Whistic is based in Salt Lake City, Utah and aims to help companies hold each other accountable for protecting their shared data. Whistic's CEO is Nick Sorensen.

Whistic helps its customers conduct and respond to security reviews.

Their platform has tools to help you onboard, assess, and track vendors, allowing you to compare third-parties against a set of predefined criteria based on vendor questionnaires, documentation, and metadata.

Vendors can assess themselves against one of the top vendor questionnaires and publish it to their profile, along with supporting documentation including audits and certifications.

Whistic UI
Whistic UI. Source: whistic.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 & Learning Curve

The usability and design of a product play a large part in how quickly you can get up to speed and start getting your money's worth.

BitSight, Whistic, and UpGuard offer their services via SaaS and are accessible from web-based platforms that can help you find, assess, and monitor vendors.  

BitSight: Provides views of identified vendor risks enabling detailed reporting of vendors.

Whistic: Risks detailed on each point-in-time vendor assessment, which means new risks are only detected during the next assessment process. Remediation requests are not available. Their risk assessments are aligned to the VSA questionnaire, CAIQ, SIG, NIST Cybersecurity Framework, CIS Security Controls, and Privacy Shield Framework.

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 provides security ratings that aggregate different risks into a single score that allows for immediate and easy comparison of different organizations, third-party vendors, and service providers.

Whistic relies on point-in-time risk assessment to determine enterprise risk and primarily focuses on the results of standardized questionnaires.

UpGuard uses risk assessments and security ratings to provide a holistic overview of an organization's security risk. As you likely know, it can be hard to get a time-poor vendor to complete a questionnaire, and when they do, the results are subjective and are rendered inaccurate over time as new security issues emerge.  

Each service relies on a different risk assessment methodology to assess the potential risk of an IT vendor. BitSight relies on IP reputation which attempts to attribute malware traffic based on IP addresses. We've outlined in detail why we believe IP attribution isn't a complete solution for your third-party risk program.

Whistic is focused on conducting and responding to security reviews. This is designed to remove inefficiencies in third-party risk management programs for organizations and their vendors alike, rather than completing the same questionnaire over and over, they can choose to publish it to their security profile.

The standardization of security assessment practices against recognized security frameworks, and making attestations easily shareable helps all business save time, resources, and increases trust in the supply chain.

That's why, like Whistic, UpGuard has introduced security profiles to help our customers save time and money by publishing completed security questionnaires and supporting documentation to their secure, UpGuard security profile.

Additionally, UpGuard uses security ratings to provide real-time critical risk monitoring capabilities, integrated vendor processes, and accessibility to provide businesses with a complete solution.

BitSight: Relies primarily on IP reputation.

Whistic: Relies on point-in-time risk assessments that can become outdated until the next assessment process.

UpGuard: Augments point-in-time risk assessments with security ratings to ensure information is always up-to-date. Our security ratings algorithm runs hundreds of individual checks including email security and email spoofing risks (SPF, DKIM, and DMARC), website security (SSL, HSTS, header exposure), phishing and malware risk, explicit checks for 200 services across thousands of ports (mail, app, user auth, file sharing, voice, administration, database, unidentified, and open ports), domain hijacking risk (DNSSEC and domain registry issues), reputational risks (CEO rating and employee rating), credential management (exposure to known data breaches and data leaks detected by our data leak detection engine). Each identified issue is given a risk prioritization category so you know what represents the highest risk.

Predictive capabilities

The main reason organizations invest in security tools is to prevent incidents from happening in the first place.

A solution's ability to prevent data breaches and other cyber attacks before they happen should be front of mind when choosing a security platform.

This is where BitSight, Whistic, and UpGuard truly differ.

BitSight: Renowned for malware and botnet reporting, incorporating IP reputation analysis to detect active malware. However, attribution accuracy can sometimes suffer from challenges linked to hosting providers or shared IP addresses, necessitating support requests for corrections.

Whistic: Relies on risk assessments which can quickly become out of date as new zero-day exploits are discovered and new IT infrastructure is used. The truth is that questionnaires, much like penetration testing, can be subjective and become inaccurate over time as new security issues emerge. Additionally, Whistic provides no controls for capturing data loss incidents.

UpGuard: Reviews many important breach vectors to assess the supply chain attack surface, including phishing, ransomware susceptibility, man-in-the-middle attacks, DNSSEC, vulnerabilities, email spoofing, domain hijacking, and DNS issues.

Provides threat and risk intelligence, enabling greater visibility into supply chain data leakages, compromised corporate identities, and brand fraud.

Community Support

Keeping informed on product updates and the latest cyber securitydevelopments is paramount, with new vulnerabilities and cyber threatsemerging 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.

Each company has its own blog that is a useful source of information for cybersecurity awareness training, as well as vendor risk management best practices.

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.

Whistic: Company and product blog.

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 does not publicly disclose product release cycle periods but does provide overviews of significant platform updates via their corporate blog.

Whistic:

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 & 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: Public pricing information is not available.

Whistic: Public pricing information is not available..

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 & 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, Whistic, and UpGuard offer APIs.

BitSight: BitSight offers the ability for customers to extend security ratings through a Developer 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, Whistic, and UpGuard offer integrations into other platforms.

BitSight: Offers integrations with RSA Archer GRC, CyberGRX, OneTrust Vendorpedia, ProcessUnity, MetricStream, and more.

Whistic: Integrates with RiskRecon, Active Directory, Okta, and onelogin.

UpGuard: Integrates with Zapier to enable connections to 3,000+ apps; GRC platforms, ticketing systems like JIRA; VRM solutions like ServiceNow, and more.

Customers

BitSight: Customers include Optus / Singtel, The University of North Florida, Snam, and PROSA.

Whistic: Customers include Betterment, Invision, Airbnb, Zynga, and Robinhood.

UpGuard: Major customers include Accenture, DuPont, Fujitsu, GAP, McAfee.

Security rating

BitSight: BitSight Security Ratings range on a scale of 250-900 with higher ratings indicating better security performance.

Whistic: Relies on standardized security questionnaires.

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.

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