Black Kite vs Whistic: 2025 Comparison

Black Kite vs Whistic
Category	Black Kite	Whistic
General summary	Black Kite is a third-party cyber risk management platform emphasizing external risk visibility, financial impact modeling, and compliance automation. Black Kite uses non-intrusive OSINT-based scans to discover assets and vulnerabilities, presenting findings as easy-to-read letter grades. However, by excluding critical TPRM workflows, Black Kite's potential for effective third-party risk management is significantly limited.	Relies on standardized security questionnaires.
Key strengths	Black Kite takes a diverse approach to cyber risk quantification with a methodology heavily based on the Open FAIR™ standard. This allows Black Kite to derive their varying cyber risk insights from a consistent quantification base.
Key weaknesses	Black Kite does not offer vendor questionnaires or risk assessments as part of their solution offerings. While Black Kite's quantification-forward approach may be sufficient for some, customers with requirements for vendor security reviews and assurance documents for compliance needs will likely require an additional solution for this capability.
Usability and learning curve	Black Kite's interface is designed around letter-grade dashboards and detailed risk findings for its range of quantification options offered. However, insights for each focused rating are not clearly segmented by audience and often bleed across the entire platform. This can make the relevance of platform insights less consistent for specialized users, even within teams.	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	The platform gathers data from a large set of OSINT feeds and uses standards-based scoring (MITRE, NIST, Open FAIR™) to reduce false positives. However, some users note occasional duplication or outdated issues that require manual dispute or re-validation.	Relies on risk assessments which can quickly become out of date as new zero-day exploits are discovered and new IT infrastructure is used.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	Although Black Kite offers document analysis features, the platform can be seen as primarily geared toward detecting and quantifying cyber risks rather than offering fully integrated VRM workflows.
Attack surface management features	Black Kite uses OSINT data spanning domain records, subdomains, SSL certificates, and more to deliver visibility into a vendor's external footprint.
Customer support	Black Kite's users report mixed support experiences: some find support teams responsive with weekly check-ins, while others cite slower resolution times and inconsistent follow-up on false positives and duplicate findings.	Offers a company and product blog.
Workflow automation	Black Kite's Bridge™ module lets users automate vendor outreach and gather risk data during major security events, such as global-scale data breaches.
Artificial intelligence features	Black Kite offers an AI-based document scanner aimed at reducing manual questionnaire reviews and accelerating compliance mapping of vendor security postures. However, connectivity to workflows supporting other assessment operations (such as requesting further evidence via questionnaires or other documentation) is not supported without integrating with a separately deployed TPRM solution.
API and integrations	While no exhaustive list of native integrations is publicly available, Black Kite generally supports exporting scan results to external systems.	Integrates with RiskRecon, Active Directory, Okta, and OneLogin.
Purchasing & licensing transparency	Public pricing details are limited. Costs typically rise based on the number of monitored vendors, which can become significant for large supply chains. Some organizations report that the step up in licensing for “critical” vendors can be expensive.	Public pricing information is not available.
Customers	Major customers include Morgan Lewis, Healthfirst, Navy Federal, and Maersk.	Customers include Betterment, Invision, Airbnb, Zynga, and Robinhood
G2 rating Accurate as of March 2025	Currently not rated.	4.5, based on 46 reviews.
Security ratings	838 / 950	829 / 950

Black Kite vs Whistic product overview

Learn more about the products and how they compare.

We assess three TPRM solutions, Black Kite, Whistic, and UpGuard, to help you make an informed decision before investing in the right solution for your needs.

Black Kite Overview

Black Kite is a cyber risk rating platform that leverages open-source threat intelligence and non-intrusive cyber reconnaissance to provide information about your vendor risk at scale.

It collects a wide range of information without touching the target customer. It leverages advances in data science and machine learning to provide higher frequency and precise real-time risk assessments.

Black Kite UI

The Black Kite UI. Source: www.blackkitetech.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. Customers can use Whistic’s workflows to conduct security reviews and respond to security reviews in one platform.

Whistic expedites the risk assessment process by making vendor security information available to prospective partners through its Whistic Trust Catalog. Their platform has tools to help you onboard, assess, and track vendors by 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. These profiles can be made available to existing and prospective business partners to expedite the risk assessment process.

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 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.

Black Kite - Unintuitive user workflow, steep learning curve for first-time users.
Whistic: Interface is easy to understand, takes some time to completely master.
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

Black Kite, Whistic, and UpGuard help organizations stay informed about their vendors’ information security risks as part of third-party risk management (TPRM) and vendor due diligence programs.

Black Kite: Bases its third-party risk mitigation strategies on an evaluation of each third-party vendor’s security posture, a metric quantified with a security ratings feature known as Cyber Risk Scorecard.
Whistic: Relies on point-in-time risk assessments that can become outdated until the next assessment process.
UpGuard: Offers real-time visibility into any third-party vendor’s risk posture & security rating along with total automation for managing vendor due diligence and remediation programs.

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.

Black Kite, Whistic, and UpGuard offer comprehensive online resources to educate and inform customers.

Black Kite: Company and product blog.

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: 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.

Keeping customers and the cybersecurity community informed on the latest cyber security developments is paramount, with new vulnerabilities and threats emerging daily.

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.

Black Kite: The release model for Black Kite is unknown.
Whistic: The release model for Whistic is unknown.
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.

Black Kite: Public pricing information is not available.
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 and extensibility

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.

Black Kite, Whistic, and UpGuard offer APIs.

Black Kite: Public pricing information is not available.
Whistic: Offers standard APIs facilitating integrations with other internal software solutions.
UpGuard: Offers a standard API to pull data from UpGuard’s platform into other enterprise applications.

Third-party integrations

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.

Black Kite, Whistic, and UpGuard offer integrations into other platforms.

Black Kite: Integrates with Supply Wisdom and VendorInsight.
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

Black Kite: Customers include Polk & Wardwell, LLP, a Fortune 500 retailer, and an OTC financial institution.
Whistic: Customers include Betterment, Invision, Airbnb, Zynga, and Robinhood.
UpGuard: Major customers include Accenture, New York Stock Exchange, Tech Mahindra, IAG, Hopin, NSW Government, and Morningstar.

Security rating

Black Kite: Provides a risk rating from A to F, like a report card.
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.

Black Kite vs Whistic

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