CyberGRX vs RiskRecon: 2023 Comparison and Review

The design, usability, and learning curve of a product has a large role to play when deciding on a solution. The sooner you and your team can get up to speed, the faster you can get the value you are paying for.  

CyberGRX, RiskRecon, and UpGuard are all SaaS that require minimal installation or configuration and are easily accessible from their websites.

• 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.
• RiskRecon: Provides risk prioritization based on your configured policy
• 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 our in-house security team, and where possible remediation and protection suggestions are provided. Additionally, we have a library of pre-built questionnaires that can be sent and managed with the UpGuard platform including a pandemic (e.g. COVID-19), ISO 27001, PCI DSS, NIST Cybersecurity Framework, CCPA, and Modern Slavery questionnaires. Read our full guide on the top security questionnaires here.

CyberGRX relies on point-in-time assessments to determine risk, primarily focusing on internal security controls and policies.

In contrast, RiskRecon and UpGuard use security ratings to aggregate different risks into a single score that allows for immediate and easy comparison of different organizations, third-party vendors, and service providers.

​UpGuard's security ratings also take into account the results of intelligent security questionnaires sent through the UpGuard platform.

According to Gartner, cybersecurity ratings will become as important as credit ratings when assessing the risk of existing and new business relationships…these services will become a precondition for business relationships and part of the standard of due care for providers and procurers of services. Additionally, the services will have expanded their scope to assess other areas, such as cyber insurance, due diligence for M&A and even as a raw metric for internal security programs.

Read our full guide on security ratings here.

• CyberGRX: Relies on a shared library of point-in-time risk assessments.
  
• RiskRecon: RiskRecon distills its assessment criteria into a simple score from 0-10.
• UpGuard: Provides a score between 0 and 950 along with the following letter grades, 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.

CyberGRX vs. RiskRecon: Risk Assessment Methodology

CyberGRX provides a risk exchange platform that leverages a storehouse of validated third-party risk assessments. It is designed to remove inefficiencies in the assessors and the assessed's third-party risk management program by allowing vendors to complete a single assessment and then share it on the platform.

In contrast, RiskRecon relies on misconfiguration scanning. This means they look at an organization's Internet footprint to determine how it compares to best practices and what security gaps could lead to successful cyber attacks on an organization's confidentiality, integrity, or availability.  

UpGuard takes a combined approach. We believe the standardization of security assessment practices against recognized security frameworks, as well as making attestations easily shareable is great and helps organizations save time, money, and increases trust in the supply chain.

That's why we've also introduced a security assessment exchange that allows our customers to create a security profile that lists out supporting information like a SOC 2 report or completed security questionnaires.

We also believe that scanning for misconfiguration and security issues is just as important. That's why we also add critical risk monitoring capabilities, integrated vendor processes, and accessibility to provide you with a complete solution for your risk and compliance needs.

Think of UpGuard as a combination of CyberGRX and RiskRecon. Our platform can help determine potential attack vectors and vulnerabilities that lead to data breaches.

• CyberGRX: Relies on point-in-time risk assessments which can become out of date until the next assessment process.
  
• RiskRecon: Assesses an organization against 11 security domains and 41 security criteria
• UpGuard: 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) and results of intelligent security questionnaires.

CyberGRX vs. RiskRecon: Scope

Each solution has a different level of coverage they provide. If you employ niche IT vendors or specialists, it's important they are covered by the solution you choose.

Successful cyber attacks on small vendors can lead to large data breaches. Remember, Target's exposure of more than 110 million customers' personal data and credit card information started with an HVAC contractor.

• CyberGRX: 100,000+ companies on the exchange.
• RiskRecon: unknown
• UpGuard: 2,000,000 organizations scanned daily

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

This makes a solution's ability to prevent data breaches and other cyber attacks the most important thing.

This is where CyberGRX, RiskRecon, and UpGuard truly differ.

• CyberGRX: Checks for misconfigurations across Internet footprint and covers breach vectors such as phishing, ransomware susceptibility (like WannaCry), man-in-the-middle attacks, DNSSEC, vulnerabilities, email spoofing, domain hijacking, and DNS issues. Data breach incidents are captured, and notice is provided.
• RiskRecon: RiskRecon focuses on third-party assessment across 11 security domains and 41 security criteria.
• UpGuard: 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. For example, we were able to detect data exposed in a GitHub repository by an AWS engineer in 30 minutes. We reported it to AWS and the repo was secured the same day. This repo contained personal identity documents and system credentials including passwords, AWS key pairs, and private keys. We're able to do this because we actively discover exposed datasets on the open and deep web, scouring open S3 buckets, public Github repos, and unsecured RSync and FTP servers. Our data leak discovery engine continuously searches for keyword lists provided by our customers and is continually refined by our team of analysts, using the expertise and techniques gleaned from years of breach research. The UpGuard methodology is continuously refined based on the actual data breaches we have discovered and reported to the world in the New York Times, Bloomberg, Washington Post, Forbes, and TechCrunch.

CyberGRX, RiskRecon, and Upguard have all invested in their community to help customers get up to speed, reduce operational overhead, and drive business results.

All three have their own blogs that are useful sources of information for cybersecurity awareness and vendor risk management training.

• CyberGRX: Company and product blog.
  
• RiskRecon: Company and product blog.
• UpGuard: 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.

Information security needs to constantly adapt and change to keep up with changes with the information and technology it is designed to protect. This means vendor risk management best practices are constantly changing too.

New vulnerabilities are added to CVE on a daily basis, attackers find new ways to exploit programming errors, and security controls become invalid constantly.

You need to be able to rely on your security tooling, and that means they need to be able to incorporate changes quickly.

UpGuard has adopted DevOps principles internally to develop, test, and release software on a continuous basis, ensuring fast, consistent, and safe releases that are thoroughly tested.

Software can be expensive, especially third-party risk management software. The industry often uses opaque pricing policies designed to take power away from the purchaser, and they are typically priced on a per vendor, per year basis except in some cases where reports can be generated for a fixed price.

RiskRecon is more expensive than UpGuard which can price out small to medium-size businesses and relegate even large organizations to managing only their most at-risk vendors. CyberGRX provides no transparency on their pricing and we weren't able to find any information online.

With that said, all three have professional services designed to help with setup, ongoing training, and best practices.

• CyberGRX: There is no public pricing available for CyberGRX, making it hard to know how much you would pay without talking to them.
  
• RiskRecon: Public pricing information is not available. Pricing is reported to start at $10,000 and increases based on the number of vendors monitored.
• UpGuard: UpGuard has a transparent pricing model which you can view here. UpGuard pricing starts at $5k/year and scales with your company. If you have any questions, please let us know via sales@upguard.com and we will follow up.

Each service has its own platform but some users may want to expose data to outside services or consolidate reporting into an internal dashboard. If this is you, good news each service offers a standard API to pull data from.

Not every team has access to technical resources who understand how to work with APIs, this is where standardized third-party integrations come in handy.

• CyberGRX: Integrates with multiple GRC platforms (using connectors), visualization tools, ticketing systems, and SOC tools.
• RiskRecon: Offers integrations with GRC platforms such as RSA Archer, Sigma Ratings, Whistic, and more.
• UpGuard: Integrates with GRC platforms, ticketing systems like ServiceNow, and more.

Sometimes the best proof is who else is using it. With that said, all three companies have impressive customer lists and none is more distinguished than the other.

• CyberGRX: Major customers include Medibank Private, Mass Mutual, QBE, Solix, and McAfee.
• RiskRecon: Customers include Informatica, Tufts Health Plan, University of San Francisco, and Sentara.
• UpGuard: Customers include NASA, the New York Stock Exchange (ICE), Morningstar, Akamai, Bill.com, IAG, and ADP. Read our customer case studies here and our Gartner reviews here.

Here's what a few UpGuard customers had to say about their experience. You can read more on Gartner reviews.

• "UpGuard has given us a view of our vendor security posture. The ability to launch a questionnaire or ask for a plan of remediation for items that show as vulnerable is also a great added value and a time saver. UpGuard is also very customer focused. They respond quickly to issues and to questions and welcome any input that could improve the product. Overall it is one of the best value add tools we have."
• "The simplicity of the product is fantastic. My team and I were able to be up and running in minutes. We monitor risks on over 25 vendors in near real-time and use these statistics to report to the C suite and Board of Directors. Upguard has become part of the critical cybersecurity metrics that we monitor and report upon."
• "The ease of use and simplicity of the product is excellent. We were able to be up and running with 50 vendors within minutes not hours. The reporting is used for monthly statistics and is reported to our Senior Management. Upguard has become an integral part of our critical cybersecurity metrics that we monitor and report upon."

Finally, let's take a look at how all three platforms compare when assessed by UpGuard's platform on July 28, 2020. It's important to note that UpGuard adheres to the Principles of Fair and Accurate Security Ratings:

• Transparency: UpGuard believes in providing full and timely transparency not only to our customers but to any organization that wants to understand their security posture, which is why you can request your free security rating here and you can book a free trial of our platform here.
• Dispute, Correction, and Appeal: UpGuard is committed to working with customers, vendors and any organization that believes their score is not accurate or outdated.
• Accuracy and Validation: UpGuard's security ratings are empirical, data-driven and based on independently verifiable and accessible information.
• Model Governance: While the datasets and methodologies used to calculate our security ratings can change from time to time to better reflect our understanding of how to mitigate cybersecurity risk, we provide reasonable notice and explanation to our customers about how their security rating may be impacted.
• Independence: No commercial agreement or lack thereof, gives an organization the ability to improve its security rating without improving their security posture.
• Confidentiality: Any information disclosed to UpGuard during the course of a challenged rating or dispute is appropriately protected. Nor do we provide third-parties with sensitive or confidential information on rated organizations that could lead to system compromise.