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BitSight vs Whistic: 2024 Comparison

Bitsight vs Whistic

See how UpGuard helps you automate your third-party risk assessment workflows and get instant notifications about your vendors’ security.
UpGuard is trusted by hundreds of companies worldwide
Trusted by hundreds of companies worldwide

Bitsight vs Whistic

See how they compare side-by-side.
Capabilities
5 stars
2,000,000+ organizations scanned daily. Non-intrusive scans of IPv4 web space completed in just 24 hours.
Star rating
170,000 supported organizations.
Star rating
Relies on standardized security questionnaires.
Usability and the learning curve
5 stars
High-level summation of risk with the ability to drill down into precise technical details.
Star rating
Provides views of identified vendor risks enabling detailed reporting of vendors.
Star rating
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.
Community support
5 stars
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 our breach research blog has uncovered and secured some of the largest data breaches.
Star rating
Bitsight maintains regular blog posts and webinars covering security incidents, feature updates, and industry developments.
Star rating
Company and product blog.
Release rate
4 stars
UpGuard has adopted DevOps principles internally to develop, test, and release software continuously, ensuring fast, consistent, and safe releases.
Star rating
Bitsight does not publicly disclose product release cycle periods but does provide overviews of significant platform updates via their corporate blog.
Star rating
Pricing and support
5 stars
UpGuard has a transparent pricing model which you can view here. UpGuard pricing starts at $5,999/year and scales with your company.
Star rating
Public pricing information is not available. Pricing is reported to start at $20,000 plus $2,000-$2,500 per vendor per year.
Star rating
Reported to start at $25,000 and is based on the number of vendors managed in the platform or the number of security questionnaires to which you're responding.
API and extensibility
4 stars
UpGuard offers a standard API to pull data into other enterprise applications.
Star rating
Bitsight offers the ability for customers to extend security ratings through a Developer API.
Star rating
Third-party integrations
4 stars
Connect UpGuard with over 4,000+ apps using our Zapier integration.
Star rating
Offers integrations with RSA Archer GRC, CyberGRX, OneTrust Vendorpedia, ProcessUnity, MetricStream, and more.
Star rating
Integrates with RiskRecon, Active Directory, Okta, and onelogin.
Predictive capabilities
5 stars
As UpGuard checks for misconfigurations across your Internet footprint, many important breach vectors are covered, including phishing, ransomware susceptibility (like WannaCry), man-in-the-middle attacks, DNSSEC, vulnerabilities, email spoofing, domain hijacking, and DNS issues. Data leaks are automatically surfaced by the platform for your team to assess and close before they become breaches.
Star rating
The IP reputation methodology helps catch active malware installations, but that’s only one possible way a data breach can occur.
Star rating
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.
Customers
5 stars
The New York Stock Exchange (ICE), Morningstar, TDK, PagerDuty, Hopin, and IAG. Read our customer stories.
Star rating
Major customers include Optus / Singtel, The University of North Florida, Snam, and PROSA.
Star rating
Customers include Betterment, Invision, Airbnb, Zynga, and Robinhood.
G2 rating
Accurate as of January 2024
5 stars
4.5, based on 164 reviews. Named a G2 Market Leader for Third Party & Supplier Risk Management Software.
Star rating
4.6, based on 35 reviews.
Star rating
4.6, based on 40 reviews.
Security rating
X
950
/ 950
X
950
/ 950
X
950
/ 950

Bitsight vs UpGuard

See how they compare side-by-side.
Capabilities
5 stars
2,000,000+ organizations scanned daily. Non-intrusive scans of IPv4 web space completed in just 24 hours.
Star rating
170,000 supported organizations.
Usability and the learning curve
5 stars
Highly intuitive workflow and shallow learning curve for faster VRM program implementation.
Star rating
Provides views of identified vendor risks enabling detailed reporting of vendors.
Community support
5 stars
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 our breach research blog has uncovered and secured some of the largest data breaches.
Star rating
Bitsight maintains regular blog posts and webinars covering security incidents, feature updates, and industry developments.
Release rate
4 stars
UpGuard has adopted DevOps principles internally to develop, test, and release software continuously, ensuring fast, consistent, and safe releases.
Star rating
Bitsight does not publicly disclose product release cycle periods but does provide overviews of significant platform updates via their corporate blog.
Pricing and support
5 stars
UpGuard has a transparent pricing model which you can view here. UpGuard pricing starts at $5,999/year and scales with your company.
Star rating
Public pricing information is not available. Pricing is reported to start at $20,000 plus $2,000-$2,500 per vendor per year.
API and extensibility
4 stars
UpGuard offers a standard API to pull data into other enterprise applications.
Star rating
Bitsight offers the ability for customers to extend security ratings through a Developer API.
Third-party integrations
4 stars
Connect UpGuard with over 4,000+ apps using our Zapier integration.
Star rating
Offers integrations with RSA Archer GRC, CyberGRX, OneTrust Vendorpedia, ProcessUnity, MetricStream, and more.
Predictive capabilities
5 stars
As UpGuard checks for misconfigurations across your Internet footprint, many important breach vectors are covered, including phishing, ransomware susceptibility (like WannaCry), man-in-the-middle attacks, DNSSEC, vulnerabilities, email spoofing, domain hijacking, and DNS issues. Data leaks are automatically surfaced by the platform for your team to assess and close before they become breaches.
Star rating
The IP reputation methodology helps catch active malware installations, but that’s only one possible way a data breach can occur.
Customers
5 stars
The New York Stock Exchange (ICE), Morningstar, TDK, PagerDuty, Hopin, and IAG. Read our customer stories.
Star rating
Major customers include Optus / Singtel, The University of North Florida, Snam, and PROSA.
G2 rating
Accurate as of January 2024
5 stars
4.5, based on 164 reviews. Named a G2 Market Leader for Third Party & Supplier Risk Management Software.
Star rating
4.6, based on 35 reviews.
Security rating
X
950
/ 950
X
950
/ 950

Bitsight vs UpGuard

Bitsight vs Whistic

See how they compare side-by-side.
Capabilities
5 stars
2,000,000+ organizations scanned daily. Non-intrusive scans of IPv4 web space completed in just 24 hours.
Usability and the learning curve
5 stars
High-level summation of risk with the ability to drill down into precise technical details.
Community support
5 stars
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 our breach research blog has uncovered and secured some of the largest data breaches.
Release rate
4 stars
UpGuard has adopted DevOps principles internally to develop, test, and release software continuously, ensuring fast, consistent, and safe releases.
Pricing and support
5 stars
UpGuard has a transparent pricing model which you can view here. UpGuard pricing starts at $5,999/year and scales with your company.
API and extensibility
4 stars
UpGuard offers a standard API to pull data into other enterprise applications.
Third-party integrations
4 stars
Connect UpGuard with over 4,000+ apps using our Zapier integration.
Predictive capabilities
5 stars
As UpGuard checks for misconfigurations across your Internet footprint, many important breach vectors are covered, including phishing, ransomware susceptibility (like WannaCry), man-in-the-middle attacks, DNSSEC, vulnerabilities, email spoofing, domain hijacking, and DNS issues. Data leaks are automatically surfaced by the platform for your team to assess and close before they become breaches.
Customers
5 stars
The New York Stock Exchange (ICE), Morningstar, TDK, PagerDuty, Hopin, and IAG. Read our customer stories.
G2 rating
Accurate as of January 2024
5 stars
4.5, based on 164 reviews. Named a G2 Market Leader for Third Party & Supplier Risk Management Software.
Capabilities
Star rating
170,000 supported organizations.
Usability and the learning curve
Star rating
Provides views of identified vendor risks enabling detailed reporting of vendors.
Community support
Star rating
Bitsight maintains regular blog posts and webinars covering security incidents, feature updates, and industry developments.
Release rate
Star rating
Bitsight does not publicly disclose product release cycle periods but does provide overviews of significant platform updates via their corporate blog.
Pricing and support
Star rating
Public pricing information is not available. Pricing is reported to start at $20,000 plus $2,000-$2,500 per vendor per year.
API and extensibility
Star rating
Bitsight offers the ability for customers to extend security ratings through a Developer API.
Third-party integrations
Star rating
Offers integrations with RSA Archer GRC, CyberGRX, OneTrust Vendorpedia, ProcessUnity, MetricStream, and more.
Predictive capabilities
Star rating
The IP reputation methodology helps catch active malware installations, but that’s only one possible way a data breach can occur.
Customers
Star rating
Major customers include Optus / Singtel, The University of North Florida, Snam, and PROSA.
G2 rating
Accurate as of January 2024
Star rating
4.6, based on 35 reviews.
Capabilities
Star rating
Relies on standardized security questionnaires.
Usability and the learning curve
Star rating
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.
Community support
Star rating
Company and product blog.
Pricing and support
Star rating
Reported to start at $25,000 and is based on the number of vendors managed in the platform or the number of security questionnaires to which you're responding.
Third-party integrations
Star rating
Integrates with RiskRecon, Active Directory, Okta, and onelogin.
Predictive capabilities
Star rating
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.
Customers
Star rating
Customers include Betterment, Invision, Airbnb, Zynga, and Robinhood.
G2 rating
Accurate as of January 2024
Star rating
4.6, based on 40 reviews.

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: In addition to monitoring breach vectors indicating susceptibility to phishing, man-in-the-middle attacks, and email spoofing, BitSight aims to incorporate IP reputation methodology to catch active malware installations.

However, threat and risk intelligence enabling greater visibility into supply chain data leakages, compromised corporate identities, and brand fraud is not currently supported.

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 directly available, but prices are reported to be around $2000-$2500 per vendor per year.

Whistic: Reported to start at $25,000 and is based on the number of vendors managed in the platform or the number of security questionnaires to which you're responding.

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.

Whistic:

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.

Customer Reviews

Gartner Peer Insights

Overall ratings for the IT VRM Solutions market. Accurate as of January 2024
UpGuard logo

Bitsight

Whistic

Gartner Peer Insights

Overall ratings for the IT VRM Solutions market. Accurate as of January 2024
5 stars
4.4, based on 160 reviews. Named a Representative Vendor in the 2022 Gartner Market Guide for IT VRM Solutions
Star rating
4.5, based on 253 reviews.
Star rating
3.8, based on 3 reviews.
UpGuard logo

Bitsight

Gartner Peer Insights

Overall ratings for the IT VRM Solutions market. Accurate as of January 2024
5 stars
4.4, based on 160 reviews. Named a Representative Vendor in the 2022 Gartner Market Guide for IT VRM Solutions
Star rating
4.5, based on 253 reviews.
UpGuard logo
5 stars
4.4, based on 160 reviews. Named a Representative Vendor in the 2022 Gartner Market Guide for IT VRM Solutions
Bitsight
4.5, based on 253 reviews.
Whistic
3.8, based on 3 reviews.

G2

Accurate as of January 2024
UpGuard logo

Bitsight

Whistic

G2

Accurate as of January 2024
5 stars
4.5, based on 164 reviews. Named a G2 Market Leader for Third Party & Supplier Risk Management Software.
Star rating
4.6, based on 35 reviews.
Star rating
4.6, based on 40 reviews.
UpGuard logo

Bitsight

G2
Accurate as of January 2024
5 stars
4.5, based on 164 reviews. Named a G2 Market Leader for Third Party & Supplier Risk Management Software.
Star rating
4.6, based on 35 reviews.
UpGuard logo
5 stars
4.5, based on 164 reviews. Named a G2 Market Leader for Third Party & Supplier Risk Management Software.
Bitsight
4.6, based on 35 reviews.
Whistic
4.6, based on 40 reviews.

Glassdoor

Accurate as of January 2024
UpGuard logo

Bitsight

Whistic

Glassdoor

Accurate as of January 2024
5 stars
4.6
Star rating
4.5
Star rating
4.5
UpGuard logo

Bitsight

Glassdoor
Accurate as of January 2024
5 stars
4.6
Star rating
4.5
UpGuard logo
5 stars
4.6
Bitsight
4.5
Whistic
4.5

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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