Living Security vs Obsidian Security: 2026 Comparison

Living Security vs Obsidian Security
Category	UpGuard	Living Security	Obsidian Security
General summary	UpGuard manages cyber risk everywhere it lives: your vendors, your internet-facing attack surface, and your workforce. You get one platform that connects all three risk areas instead of separate tools and spreadsheets stitched together. A risk in one surfaces in the others automatically. A breached vendor flags your own exposure. A leaked employee credential links straight to the account and the vendor involved. AI handles the repetitive work of triaging alerts, reviewing vendor evidence, and completing questionnaires. That means lean security teams can run programs that would otherwise need much bigger teams. UpGuard fits mid-market teams, deploys quickly, and slots in without replacing what you already have.	Living Security is an AI-native human risk management (HRM) platform that continuously measures, prioritizes, and reduces cybersecurity risk across an organization's workforce, including employees, contractors, and AI agents. Its Intelligence Engine correlates 300+ behavioral, identity, and threat signals from an organization's existing security stack, and its Human Risk Index (HRI) sorts individuals and groups into five distinct risk levels. Teams use these insights to focus on the small share of users driving most of the exposure and to trigger targeted action plans such as training, nudges, and automated controls. Because the platform is an analytics-and-orchestration layer that depends on integrations to generate signals, visibility is only as complete as the connected stack, and it does not provide external attack surface, vendor risk, or security ratings capabilities of its own.	Obsidian Security unifies SaaS and AI security for the enterprise. The platform combines SSPM, third-party integration risk, AI governance, and Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) to deliver continuous visibility and runtime protection across humans, apps, and AI agents. By correlating real-time activity and breach intelligence in a knowledge graph with self-learning detection, Obsidian protects the core SaaS and identity layers—though it does not provide external attack surface management (EASM) or security-rating scores.
Key strengths	UpGuard unifies vendor, attack surface, and workforce risk in one console. Customers describe finally seeing the whole picture, rather than paying for three tools that each cover only part of it. UpGuard also surfaces exposures that ratings tools and scanners miss, without the multi-week delay of a typical scan cycle. Lean teams can run the entire program without expanding headcount or adding a managed service.	Living Security's core strength is data correlation. Its Intelligence Engine aggregates siloed signals from across an organization's existing security, identity, and training tools and connects them into a single, individual-level risk picture. The Human Risk Index translates that data into prioritized risk tiers, allowing teams to focus effort on the small percentage of users who drive the majority of exposure. The company also pairs this analytics layer with gamified and AI-personalized training content, which it positions as a driver of stronger completion and behavior-change rates. Backing all of this is a large, multi-year behavioral dataset drawn from 100+ enterprises and independently analyzed by the Cyentia Institute.	Obsidian's core strength lies in its deep detection capabilities. By correlating real-time activity, app configurations, and breach intelligence within a knowledge graph with self-learning detection, it rapidly stops live threats like account takeovers, token compromise, and OAuth abuse (ITDR). The platform also unifies SaaS and AI security, managing posture (SSPM) and governing AI agent usage across human, app, and machine identities. Additionally, its SaaS supply chain security proactively isolates risky third-party integrations before an external vendor breach can cascade into your environment.
Key weaknesses	UpGuard focuses on managing live, connected risk, not heavy, standalone compliance software. Full governance features, including policy and controls management, arrive later this year. Teams that need a mature governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) system of record today can run UpGuard alongside one for now. UpGuard also doesn’t translate risk into dollar figures. If financial risk quantification is a must-have, factor that into your evaluation.	The most significant consideration is that Living Security depends on integrations with an organization's existing security tools to generate its risk signals, so its insights are only as complete as the connected stack. Organizations with a thin or poorly integrated toolset will see reduced value. Some users have also noted reporting limitations, such as the lack of an out-of-the-box view for tracking metrics against an exact training start date.	The most consistently cited product limitation reviewers note is that reporting is limited, and some dashboards are not particularly functional or helpful, though Obsidian is actively improving this area. Relatedly, as a relatively new SSPM entrant, some reviewers note that it lags behind more established tools in certain areas, particularly in its threat catalog and the refinement of some workflows.
Usability and learning curve	Teams deploy quickly and get up and running without an extended onboarding period. New employees can learn the interface without lengthy training. A single console consolidates workflows that would otherwise require multiple tools, reducing the ongoing burden of learning and maintaining separate systems. Operating the platform doesn’t require a professional services engagement.	Living Security emphasizes a low-friction onboarding experience, with a quick-start path to get a tenant up and running in minutes, along with a step-by-step guide for setting up an organization. The interface centers on visual, real-time dashboards that present risk at the organization, segment, department, and individual levels, and an embedded AI assistant (Livvy) is available throughout the platform to answer questions and surface insights, which lowers the learning curve for new users. The onboarding effort is the upfront integration work of connecting identity, training, phishing, and email security tools so the platform has the data to begin correlation.	Obsidian is agentless and API-based, so getting started takes minutes with no agents to deploy or rules to write. Day-to-day, users value having SaaS and AI activity correlated in one place, which speeds up investigations. Overall, the learning curve is reasonable for an enterprise security platform, helped considerably by Obsidian's onboarding support.
Cyber risk data accuracy	UpGuard’s data remains current. Vendor postures refresh continuously, and users can initiate a scan on demand instead of waiting for a fixed cycle. UpGuard attributes findings accurately, so teams do not spend weeks correcting assets assigned to the wrong company, a common issue with ratings tools. Threat Monitoring scans the open, deep, and dark web, along with social media, for leaked data, exposed credentials, and brand impersonation. AI filters out noise so the alerts that reach your team are worth acting on.	Living Security's data accuracy is anchored in its Human Risk Index, a dynamic score (1–1000, each identity starting at 500) built from both risky and vigilant user behaviors plus external threat signals. Rather than an additive tally, the HRI is a probabilistic model that weighs risks and correlations across 250+ measured behaviors drawn from three pillars: employee actions (phishing and training results), identity and access signals, and real-time threat intelligence. Because these signals are pulled directly from an organization's own systems of record through integrations, the data tends to be high-fidelity for behavioral and user-risk context, though it is behavior- and identity-based rather than independent external scanning, and the exact HRI weighting is proprietary.	Obsidian's core advantage is its high-fidelity data foundation. By normalizing rich, real-time activity and granular in-app configurations against a massive breach-intelligence dataset, it ensures exceptional data accuracy from the jump. This precise telemetry feeds a knowledge graph and self-learning detection models to deliver high-fidelity, low-noise detections of token abuse and misconfigurations. However, this data fidelity depends entirely on direct, connected integrations rather than external scanning, and its threat catalog is still maturing within the SaaS and identity layers.
Vendor risk management features	UpGuard runs the complete third-party risk management (TPRM) process in one platform: onboarding, assessing, remediating, monitoring, and reporting on vendors. Each vendor’s live external exposure and any linked leaked credentials appear directly within the vendor program, so teams can act on verified risk instead of relying on paperwork. AI-powered security questionnaires read vendor evidence and complete assessments automatically, cutting completion time by up to 95%. Instant risk assessments return a point-in-time report in under a minute, mapped to frameworks like ISO 27001 and NIST CSF 2.0.	Dedicated vendor (third-party) risk management is outside Living Security's scope. While the platform extends its human-risk monitoring to contractors and other extended-workforce identities, this coverage applies to individuals, not to company-level third-party risk management. It does not provide the core TPRM workflows (vendor security questionnaires, compliance assessments, remediation tracking, or continuous vendor monitoring) that define a dedicated VRM platform, so organizations needing third-party risk management would require a separate tool.	Obsidian is not a dedicated third-party/vendor risk management (TPRM) platform and lacks core VRM lifecycle workflows such as vendor security questionnaires, formal assessments and scoring, and structured remediation tracking across a vendor portfolio. It does, however, discover and reduce risky third-party SaaS integrations and OAuth grants, surfacing the privileges third parties hold, and detects third-party and supply-chain threats early to contain the blast radius before a vendor breach cascades into the customer's environment. This delivers meaningful third-party risk reduction at the integration and threat layers, but organizations that need full vendor due diligence and lifecycle management would still require a dedicated VRM tool.
Attack surface management features	UpGuard continuously monitors your internet-facing footprint. It maps assets, flags exposures such as misconfigurations, expired certificates, and open ports, and ranks remediation priorities. The UpGuard platform also detects typosquatting and lookalike domains set up to impersonate your brand before they’re used for phishing. Because attack surface monitoring runs alongside vendor and workforce risk, an exposed asset or leaked credential automatically links to the person and vendor involved. This gives teams visibility into both external exposure and vendor risk in a single view.	Attack surface management is not a function of Living Security. The platform does not discover, inventory, or monitor an organization's external-facing digital assets (domains, IPs, exposed services, or certificates) the way a dedicated ASM or security-ratings tool does. Its Intelligence Engine ingests public OSINT and external threat-intelligence signals, but these serve as contextual inputs for individual human risk scoring rather than for mapping or continuously monitoring an external attack surface. Organizations requiring ASM capabilities would need a separate solution.	Obsidian does not perform traditional external attack surface management; it does not scan or monitor internet-facing infrastructure such as domains, IPs, exposed services, or certificates. Its relevance to the attack surface is limited to the SaaS and identity layers. It reduces the SaaS attack surface by discovering shadow SaaS, mapping and curbing risky third-party API integrations and OAuth grants, and identifying excessive privileges and exposed accounts. Organizations needing conventional, internet-facing ASM would still require a dedicated tool.
Customer support	UpGuard supports every customer across all plan tiers, from the smallest plan to the largest. Support teams assist with both technical setup and larger program decisions. Customers frequently cite responsive, hands-on support as a reason they continue with UpGuard.	Self-service options include the "Support Garden" knowledge base, a ticket-based support request system, and a customer community for submitting ideas and feedback. Support is structured around an always-on AI chat assistant that serves as the first line of help and escalates unresolved issues to the support team, backed by a standard ticket queue that aims to respond within 48 business hours. For time-sensitive issues, a separate critical-support path handles urgent needs outside standard business hours (Monday–Friday, 8 am–5 pm CT). In-product guidance is delivered through an embedded Resource Center offering walkthroughs and quick access to the knowledge base and community.	Customer support is one of Obsidian's most consistently praised attributes. Enterprise customers describe it as exceptional, responsive, and proactive. The model is high-touch, with customers supported by dedicated Customer Success Managers, Technical Account Managers (TAMs), and account teams that guide implementation, prioritize feature requests, and work closely with the customer's security organization. The main caveat is that Obsidian does not publicly document standard support tiers or SLAs (these are arranged through enterprise agreements), and its self-service support resources are lighter than those of larger, more established vendors.
Workflow automation	Risk Automations turns a risk signal into action across the platform, with no code and no engineering ticket. On the vendor side, it automates onboarding from questionnaire data, triages vendor score drops, schedules recurring vendor reports, and opens remediation tickets in ServiceNow or Jira. On the threat side, a Breach Risk detection can trigger a workflow that alerts Teams or Slack and runs a system-level fix, like blocking a malicious IP or forcing a credential reset. This is the difference between a tool that reports on risk and one that resolves it.	Living Security's Actions framework lets teams build playbooks that trigger automatically when an individual's risk rises, deploying targeted training, nudges, manager alerts, access-control changes, and ITSM tickets without manual intervention. The company positions this as automating 60–80% of remediation while keeping a human in the loop for oversight, with just-in-time coaching delivered directly in Slack and Teams. Tailored, risk-based action plans are generated and executed from within the platform itself. As with its risk signals, the reach of automated controls depends on the upstream and downstream tools an organization has integrated.	Obsidian supports automation across detection, response, and governance. Through its ITDR capabilities, it detects identity threats and enables fast, guided response to contain them before they become incidents, and it applies runtime guardrails and policy enforcement to AI agents and GenAI usage. On the posture side, it offers guided and automated remediation for misconfigurations, excessive privileges, and risky third-party OAuth grants, including the revocation of inappropriate integrations. An action control plane turns its risk intelligence into enforcement, and integrations with tools such as ServiceNow, Jira, and Splunk let teams route alerts, tickets, and evidence into existing workflows. As with any SaaS/identity platform, the reach of automated enforcement depends on the connected apps and downstream tools.
Artificial intelligence features	UpGuard’s AI performs specific, defined tasks, rather than vague “AI-powered” work. The AI Threat Analyst sorts and scores incoming threats across your attack surface, the dark web, and social media. It clears out approximately 60% of alerts as noise, so your team only reviews what matters. The same triage logic extends to vendor and workforce signals as well. Every AI result carries a citation back to the source, so your team can verify it before acting.	Artificial intelligence is central to Living Security's current positioning as an "AI-native" platform. Its AI engine, branded Livvy, is trained on what is described as the industry's largest HRM dataset and unifies 300+ behavioral, identity, and threat signals into a Human Risk Index for every identity. Livvy spans prediction (flagging risk before it becomes an incident), guidance (surfacing prioritized recommendations with stated reasoning, confidence scores, and predicted impact), and action (driving automated remediation playbooks). AI is also applied to content creation, generating risk-aligned, hyper-personalized training.	Obsidian embeds AI as a core architectural capability rather than an add-on, applying it in two distinct directions. Internally, self-learning detection models leverage network effects to sharpen threat intelligence, while an interactive AI Assistant accelerates analyst triage and investigations. Externally, the platform delivers comprehensive AI governance, including AI-SPM, shadow AI discovery, prompt security, and agent runtime protection, across major enterprise ecosystems such as Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, Amazon Bedrock, Google Vertex, Anthropic Claude, and Salesforce Agentforce.
API and integrations	A well-documented REST API and webhooks let teams pull risk data into their own tools and trigger actions programmatically, without waiting on engineering support. For no-code work, Risk Automations adds more than 100 native integrations, including Jira, ServiceNow, Microsoft Entra, Slack, and Cloudflare. A Universal API Connector Node extends its reach to any open API.	Through its Technology Alliance Program, Living Security maintains pre-built connectors to dozens of widely used security, identity, and HR systems, including Microsoft (Azure, Defender, Intune), Okta, SailPoint, CrowdStrike, Proofpoint, Mimecast, Abnormal, Cofense, KnowBe4, Netskope, Zscaler, Rapid7, and Workday. Its Entity Graph unifies identity data across HRIS, SSO, endpoint, and email sources into a single user profile, and integrations also support outbound actions such as ITSM ticketing and access-control changes. Living Security publishes technical documentation that includes APIs for programmatic access, though detailed API references are gated.	Obsidian's agentless, API-based model delivers deep integrations across core SaaS platforms (M365, Google Workspace, Okta, Salesforce, Snowflake, Databricks, GitHub, ServiceNow, Workday) and major AI ecosystems (Bedrock, Claude, ChatGPT, Vertex, Copilot, OpenAI, Agentforce). Identity providers like Okta, Entra, and Google anchor this telemetry, routing alerts to operational tools like Jira and Splunk, while a browser extension extends visibility to track users in transit and compromised accounts. While this ecosystem is deep, it is purpose-built for the SaaS, AI, and identity domains rather than serving as a general-purpose marketplace.
Purchasing & licensing transparency	UpGuard publishes its pricing rather than hiding it behind a sales call. A free tier lets teams monitor up to five vendors and use Trust Exchange, UpGuard’s AI-powered questionnaire tool, at no cost. Paid Vendor Risk plans start at USD 1,750 per month, billed annually. Teams can start with one product and add others as they scale. One license covers both monitoring and assessments, so pricing doesn’t fragment across separate products.	Living Security publishes its packaging structure but not its prices. The platform is sold as a required base (the "Living Security Platform") plus one of three Action Packages: Train, Engage, or Adapt. Buyers are directed to "contact us for enterprise pricing." Several capabilities (phishing simulations, Cybersecurity Awareness Month, CyberEscape Online, AI content generation, and professional services) are priced separately as add-ons. There is no free plan or free trial; evaluation runs through a sales-led demo environment.	Obsidian publishes a clear, modular tier structure: Free, Foundations, and Advanced, with detailed feature breakdowns for each. Obsidian offers a free plan (up to 1,000 users) covering SaaS-sprawl and shadow-AI discovery, plus spear-phishing detection, alongside a free trial. However, it does not publish dollar pricing for its paid tiers: both Foundations (discovery and governance) and Advanced (detection, runtime defense, and incident response) are quote-only, so actual cost requires contacting sales. Pricing is generally based on headcount and scales with the modules a team selects.
Customers	UpGuard customers include Intercontinental Exchange (NYSE: ICE), Morningstar, TDK, PagerDuty, Hopin, and IAG. Read UpGuard’s customer stories to learn more.	Living Security publicly references a roster of large, recognizable enterprise customers across multiple regulated industries. Examples include Verizon, JPMorgan, CVS Health, Lockheed Martin, and Ford. The customer base skews toward Fortune 500 and large enterprises in finance, healthcare, technology, and manufacturing.	Obsidian publicly cites a track record with major enterprise and technology brands, listing companies such as Snowflake, T-Mobile, Databricks, S&P Global, and Seagate among its users, as well as organizations such as Wyndham, Algolia, BigCommerce, AAA, and Upwork. This customer base heavily skews toward large-scale, data-centric organizations, reflecting Obsidian's enterprise focus on complex SaaS and AI environments.
G2 rating Accurate as of March 2025	More than 700 verified reviews give UpGuard a 4.5 out of 5 rating on G2. UpGuard also holds G2’s top ranking as the leader in Third-Party & Supplier Risk Management for 15 consecutive quarters. The 2026 G2 Best Software Awards recognized UpGuard as one of the Top 100 Global Software Companies. Among verified reviewers, 98% give UpGuard four- or five-star ratings, and 94% approve of its product direction.	4.8, based on 6 reviews.	4.0, based on 3 reviews.
Security ratings	944 / 950	834 / 950	853 / 950

General summary

UpGuard manages cyber risk everywhere it lives: your vendors, your internet-facing attack surface, and your workforce. You get one platform that connects all three risk areas instead of separate tools and spreadsheets stitched together. A risk in one surfaces in the others automatically. A breached vendor flags your own exposure. A leaked employee credential links straight to the account and the vendor involved. AI handles the repetitive work of triaging alerts, reviewing vendor evidence, and completing questionnaires. That means lean security teams can run programs that would otherwise need much bigger teams. UpGuard fits mid-market teams, deploys quickly, and slots in without replacing what you already have.

Living Security is an AI-native human risk management (HRM) platform that continuously measures, prioritizes, and reduces cybersecurity risk across an organization's workforce, including employees, contractors, and AI agents. Its Intelligence Engine correlates 300+ behavioral, identity, and threat signals from an organization's existing security stack, and its Human Risk Index (HRI) sorts individuals and groups into five distinct risk levels. Teams use these insights to focus on the small share of users driving most of the exposure and to trigger targeted action plans such as training, nudges, and automated controls. Because the platform is an analytics-and-orchestration layer that depends on integrations to generate signals, visibility is only as complete as the connected stack, and it does not provide external attack surface, vendor risk, or security ratings capabilities of its own.

Obsidian Security unifies SaaS and AI security for the enterprise. The platform combines SSPM, third-party integration risk, AI governance, and Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) to deliver continuous visibility and runtime protection across humans, apps, and AI agents. By correlating real-time activity and breach intelligence in a knowledge graph with self-learning detection, Obsidian protects the core SaaS and identity layers—though it does not provide external attack surface management (EASM) or security-rating scores.

Key strengths

UpGuard unifies vendor, attack surface, and workforce risk in one console. Customers describe finally seeing the whole picture, rather than paying for three tools that each cover only part of it. UpGuard also surfaces exposures that ratings tools and scanners miss, without the multi-week delay of a typical scan cycle. Lean teams can run the entire program without expanding headcount or adding a managed service.

Living Security's core strength is data correlation. Its Intelligence Engine aggregates siloed signals from across an organization's existing security, identity, and training tools and connects them into a single, individual-level risk picture. The Human Risk Index translates that data into prioritized risk tiers, allowing teams to focus effort on the small percentage of users who drive the majority of exposure. The company also pairs this analytics layer with gamified and AI-personalized training content, which it positions as a driver of stronger completion and behavior-change rates. Backing all of this is a large, multi-year behavioral dataset drawn from 100+ enterprises and independently analyzed by the Cyentia Institute.

Obsidian's core strength lies in its deep detection capabilities. By correlating real-time activity, app configurations, and breach intelligence within a knowledge graph with self-learning detection, it rapidly stops live threats like account takeovers, token compromise, and OAuth abuse (ITDR). The platform also unifies SaaS and AI security, managing posture (SSPM) and governing AI agent usage across human, app, and machine identities. Additionally, its SaaS supply chain security proactively isolates risky third-party integrations before an external vendor breach can cascade into your environment.

Key weaknesses

UpGuard focuses on managing live, connected risk, not heavy, standalone compliance software. Full governance features, including policy and controls management, arrive later this year. Teams that need a mature governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) system of record today can run UpGuard alongside one for now. UpGuard also doesn’t translate risk into dollar figures. If financial risk quantification is a must-have, factor that into your evaluation.

The most significant consideration is that Living Security depends on integrations with an organization's existing security tools to generate its risk signals, so its insights are only as complete as the connected stack. Organizations with a thin or poorly integrated toolset will see reduced value. Some users have also noted reporting limitations, such as the lack of an out-of-the-box view for tracking metrics against an exact training start date.

The most consistently cited product limitation reviewers note is that reporting is limited, and some dashboards are not particularly functional or helpful, though Obsidian is actively improving this area. Relatedly, as a relatively new SSPM entrant, some reviewers note that it lags behind more established tools in certain areas, particularly in its threat catalog and the refinement of some workflows.

Usability and learning curve

Teams deploy quickly and get up and running without an extended onboarding period. New employees can learn the interface without lengthy training. A single console consolidates workflows that would otherwise require multiple tools, reducing the ongoing burden of learning and maintaining separate systems. Operating the platform doesn’t require a professional services engagement.

Living Security emphasizes a low-friction onboarding experience, with a quick-start path to get a tenant up and running in minutes, along with a step-by-step guide for setting up an organization. The interface centers on visual, real-time dashboards that present risk at the organization, segment, department, and individual levels, and an embedded AI assistant (Livvy) is available throughout the platform to answer questions and surface insights, which lowers the learning curve for new users. The onboarding effort is the upfront integration work of connecting identity, training, phishing, and email security tools so the platform has the data to begin correlation.

Obsidian is agentless and API-based, so getting started takes minutes with no agents to deploy or rules to write. Day-to-day, users value having SaaS and AI activity correlated in one place, which speeds up investigations. Overall, the learning curve is reasonable for an enterprise security platform, helped considerably by Obsidian's onboarding support.

Cyber risk data accuracy

UpGuard’s data remains current. Vendor postures refresh continuously, and users can initiate a scan on demand instead of waiting for a fixed cycle. UpGuard attributes findings accurately, so teams do not spend weeks correcting assets assigned to the wrong company, a common issue with ratings tools. Threat Monitoring scans the open, deep, and dark web, along with social media, for leaked data, exposed credentials, and brand impersonation. AI filters out noise so the alerts that reach your team are worth acting on.

Living Security's data accuracy is anchored in its Human Risk Index, a dynamic score (1–1000, each identity starting at 500) built from both risky and vigilant user behaviors plus external threat signals. Rather than an additive tally, the HRI is a probabilistic model that weighs risks and correlations across 250+ measured behaviors drawn from three pillars: employee actions (phishing and training results), identity and access signals, and real-time threat intelligence. Because these signals are pulled directly from an organization's own systems of record through integrations, the data tends to be high-fidelity for behavioral and user-risk context, though it is behavior- and identity-based rather than independent external scanning, and the exact HRI weighting is proprietary.

Obsidian's core advantage is its high-fidelity data foundation. By normalizing rich, real-time activity and granular in-app configurations against a massive breach-intelligence dataset, it ensures exceptional data accuracy from the jump. This precise telemetry feeds a knowledge graph and self-learning detection models to deliver high-fidelity, low-noise detections of token abuse and misconfigurations. However, this data fidelity depends entirely on direct, connected integrations rather than external scanning, and its threat catalog is still maturing within the SaaS and identity layers.

Vendor risk management features

UpGuard runs the complete third-party risk management (TPRM) process in one platform: onboarding, assessing, remediating, monitoring, and reporting on vendors. Each vendor’s live external exposure and any linked leaked credentials appear directly within the vendor program, so teams can act on verified risk instead of relying on paperwork. AI-powered security questionnaires read vendor evidence and complete assessments automatically, cutting completion time by up to 95%. Instant risk assessments return a point-in-time report in under a minute, mapped to frameworks like ISO 27001 and NIST CSF 2.0.

Dedicated vendor (third-party) risk management is outside Living Security's scope. While the platform extends its human-risk monitoring to contractors and other extended-workforce identities, this coverage applies to individuals, not to company-level third-party risk management. It does not provide the core TPRM workflows (vendor security questionnaires, compliance assessments, remediation tracking, or continuous vendor monitoring) that define a dedicated VRM platform, so organizations needing third-party risk management would require a separate tool.

Obsidian is not a dedicated third-party/vendor risk management (TPRM) platform and lacks core VRM lifecycle workflows such as vendor security questionnaires, formal assessments and scoring, and structured remediation tracking across a vendor portfolio. It does, however, discover and reduce risky third-party SaaS integrations and OAuth grants, surfacing the privileges third parties hold, and detects third-party and supply-chain threats early to contain the blast radius before a vendor breach cascades into the customer's environment. This delivers meaningful third-party risk reduction at the integration and threat layers, but organizations that need full vendor due diligence and lifecycle management would still require a dedicated VRM tool.

Attack surface management features

UpGuard continuously monitors your internet-facing footprint. It maps assets, flags exposures such as misconfigurations, expired certificates, and open ports, and ranks remediation priorities. The UpGuard platform also detects typosquatting and lookalike domains set up to impersonate your brand before they’re used for phishing. Because attack surface monitoring runs alongside vendor and workforce risk, an exposed asset or leaked credential automatically links to the person and vendor involved. This gives teams visibility into both external exposure and vendor risk in a single view.

Attack surface management is not a function of Living Security. The platform does not discover, inventory, or monitor an organization's external-facing digital assets (domains, IPs, exposed services, or certificates) the way a dedicated ASM or security-ratings tool does. Its Intelligence Engine ingests public OSINT and external threat-intelligence signals, but these serve as contextual inputs for individual human risk scoring rather than for mapping or continuously monitoring an external attack surface. Organizations requiring ASM capabilities would need a separate solution.

Obsidian does not perform traditional external attack surface management; it does not scan or monitor internet-facing infrastructure such as domains, IPs, exposed services, or certificates. Its relevance to the attack surface is limited to the SaaS and identity layers. It reduces the SaaS attack surface by discovering shadow SaaS, mapping and curbing risky third-party API integrations and OAuth grants, and identifying excessive privileges and exposed accounts. Organizations needing conventional, internet-facing ASM would still require a dedicated tool.

Customer support

UpGuard supports every customer across all plan tiers, from the smallest plan to the largest. Support teams assist with both technical setup and larger program decisions. Customers frequently cite responsive, hands-on support as a reason they continue with UpGuard.

Self-service options include the "Support Garden" knowledge base, a ticket-based support request system, and a customer community for submitting ideas and feedback. Support is structured around an always-on AI chat assistant that serves as the first line of help and escalates unresolved issues to the support team, backed by a standard ticket queue that aims to respond within 48 business hours. For time-sensitive issues, a separate critical-support path handles urgent needs outside standard business hours (Monday–Friday, 8 am–5 pm CT). In-product guidance is delivered through an embedded Resource Center offering walkthroughs and quick access to the knowledge base and community.

Customer support is one of Obsidian's most consistently praised attributes. Enterprise customers describe it as exceptional, responsive, and proactive. The model is high-touch, with customers supported by dedicated Customer Success Managers, Technical Account Managers (TAMs), and account teams that guide implementation, prioritize feature requests, and work closely with the customer's security organization. The main caveat is that Obsidian does not publicly document standard support tiers or SLAs (these are arranged through enterprise agreements), and its self-service support resources are lighter than those of larger, more established vendors.

Workflow automation

Risk Automations turns a risk signal into action across the platform, with no code and no engineering ticket. On the vendor side, it automates onboarding from questionnaire data, triages vendor score drops, schedules recurring vendor reports, and opens remediation tickets in ServiceNow or Jira. On the threat side, a Breach Risk detection can trigger a workflow that alerts Teams or Slack and runs a system-level fix, like blocking a malicious IP or forcing a credential reset. This is the difference between a tool that reports on risk and one that resolves it.

Living Security's Actions framework lets teams build playbooks that trigger automatically when an individual's risk rises, deploying targeted training, nudges, manager alerts, access-control changes, and ITSM tickets without manual intervention. The company positions this as automating 60–80% of remediation while keeping a human in the loop for oversight, with just-in-time coaching delivered directly in Slack and Teams. Tailored, risk-based action plans are generated and executed from within the platform itself. As with its risk signals, the reach of automated controls depends on the upstream and downstream tools an organization has integrated.

Obsidian supports automation across detection, response, and governance. Through its ITDR capabilities, it detects identity threats and enables fast, guided response to contain them before they become incidents, and it applies runtime guardrails and policy enforcement to AI agents and GenAI usage. On the posture side, it offers guided and automated remediation for misconfigurations, excessive privileges, and risky third-party OAuth grants, including the revocation of inappropriate integrations. An action control plane turns its risk intelligence into enforcement, and integrations with tools such as ServiceNow, Jira, and Splunk let teams route alerts, tickets, and evidence into existing workflows. As with any SaaS/identity platform, the reach of automated enforcement depends on the connected apps and downstream tools.

Artificial intelligence features

UpGuard’s AI performs specific, defined tasks, rather than vague “AI-powered” work. The AI Threat Analyst sorts and scores incoming threats across your attack surface, the dark web, and social media. It clears out approximately 60% of alerts as noise, so your team only reviews what matters. The same triage logic extends to vendor and workforce signals as well. Every AI result carries a citation back to the source, so your team can verify it before acting.

Artificial intelligence is central to Living Security's current positioning as an "AI-native" platform. Its AI engine, branded Livvy, is trained on what is described as the industry's largest HRM dataset and unifies 300+ behavioral, identity, and threat signals into a Human Risk Index for every identity. Livvy spans prediction (flagging risk before it becomes an incident), guidance (surfacing prioritized recommendations with stated reasoning, confidence scores, and predicted impact), and action (driving automated remediation playbooks). AI is also applied to content creation, generating risk-aligned, hyper-personalized training.

Obsidian embeds AI as a core architectural capability rather than an add-on, applying it in two distinct directions. Internally, self-learning detection models leverage network effects to sharpen threat intelligence, while an interactive AI Assistant accelerates analyst triage and investigations. Externally, the platform delivers comprehensive AI governance, including AI-SPM, shadow AI discovery, prompt security, and agent runtime protection, across major enterprise ecosystems such as Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, Amazon Bedrock, Google Vertex, Anthropic Claude, and Salesforce Agentforce.

API and integrations

A well-documented REST API and webhooks let teams pull risk data into their own tools and trigger actions programmatically, without waiting on engineering support. For no-code work, Risk Automations adds more than 100 native integrations, including Jira, ServiceNow, Microsoft Entra, Slack, and Cloudflare. A Universal API Connector Node extends its reach to any open API.

Through its Technology Alliance Program, Living Security maintains pre-built connectors to dozens of widely used security, identity, and HR systems, including Microsoft (Azure, Defender, Intune), Okta, SailPoint, CrowdStrike, Proofpoint, Mimecast, Abnormal, Cofense, KnowBe4, Netskope, Zscaler, Rapid7, and Workday. Its Entity Graph unifies identity data across HRIS, SSO, endpoint, and email sources into a single user profile, and integrations also support outbound actions such as ITSM ticketing and access-control changes. Living Security publishes technical documentation that includes APIs for programmatic access, though detailed API references are gated.

Obsidian's agentless, API-based model delivers deep integrations across core SaaS platforms (M365, Google Workspace, Okta, Salesforce, Snowflake, Databricks, GitHub, ServiceNow, Workday) and major AI ecosystems (Bedrock, Claude, ChatGPT, Vertex, Copilot, OpenAI, Agentforce). Identity providers like Okta, Entra, and Google anchor this telemetry, routing alerts to operational tools like Jira and Splunk, while a browser extension extends visibility to track users in transit and compromised accounts. While this ecosystem is deep, it is purpose-built for the SaaS, AI, and identity domains rather than serving as a general-purpose marketplace.

Purchasing & licensing transparency

UpGuard publishes its pricing rather than hiding it behind a sales call. A free tier lets teams monitor up to five vendors and use Trust Exchange, UpGuard’s AI-powered questionnaire tool, at no cost. Paid Vendor Risk plans start at USD 1,750 per month, billed annually. Teams can start with one product and add others as they scale. One license covers both monitoring and assessments, so pricing doesn’t fragment across separate products.

Living Security publishes its packaging structure but not its prices. The platform is sold as a required base (the "Living Security Platform") plus one of three Action Packages: Train, Engage, or Adapt. Buyers are directed to "contact us for enterprise pricing." Several capabilities (phishing simulations, Cybersecurity Awareness Month, CyberEscape Online, AI content generation, and professional services) are priced separately as add-ons. There is no free plan or free trial; evaluation runs through a sales-led demo environment.

Obsidian publishes a clear, modular tier structure: Free, Foundations, and Advanced, with detailed feature breakdowns for each. Obsidian offers a free plan (up to 1,000 users) covering SaaS-sprawl and shadow-AI discovery, plus spear-phishing detection, alongside a free trial. However, it does not publish dollar pricing for its paid tiers: both Foundations (discovery and governance) and Advanced (detection, runtime defense, and incident response) are quote-only, so actual cost requires contacting sales. Pricing is generally based on headcount and scales with the modules a team selects.

Customers

UpGuard customers include Intercontinental Exchange (NYSE: ICE), Morningstar, TDK, PagerDuty, Hopin, and IAG. Read UpGuard’s customer stories to learn more.

Living Security publicly references a roster of large, recognizable enterprise customers across multiple regulated industries. Examples include Verizon, JPMorgan, CVS Health, Lockheed Martin, and Ford. The customer base skews toward Fortune 500 and large enterprises in finance, healthcare, technology, and manufacturing.

Obsidian publicly cites a track record with major enterprise and technology brands, listing companies such as Snowflake, T-Mobile, Databricks, S&P Global, and Seagate among its users, as well as organizations such as Wyndham, Algolia, BigCommerce, AAA, and Upwork. This customer base heavily skews toward large-scale, data-centric organizations, reflecting Obsidian's enterprise focus on complex SaaS and AI environments.

G2 rating Accurate as of March 2025

More than 700 verified reviews give UpGuard a 4.5 out of 5 rating on G2. UpGuard also holds G2’s top ranking as the leader in Third-Party & Supplier Risk Management for 15 consecutive quarters. The 2026 G2 Best Software Awards recognized UpGuard as one of the Top 100 Global Software Companies. Among verified reviewers, 98% give UpGuard four- or five-star ratings, and 94% approve of its product direction.

4.8, based on 6 reviews.

4.0, based on 3 reviews.

Security ratings

944 / 950

834 / 950

853 / 950

Living Security vs Obsidian Security product overview

Learn more about the products and how they compare.

We assess three user risk solutions — Living Security, Obsidian Security, and UpGuard — to help you make an informed decision before investing in the right solution for your needs.

Living Security Overview

Living Security is an AI-native human risk management (HRM) platform that measures and reduces risk across an organization’s workforce, including employees, contractors, and AI agents. Its Intelligence Engine correlates 300+ behavioral, identity, and threat signals from a customer’s existing security stack into a Human Risk Index (HRI) that sorts individuals into five risk tiers. It backs this with a multi-year behavioral dataset from 100+ enterprises, analyzed by the Cyentia Institute. It pairs that with gamified, AI-personalized training and an embedded assistant, Livvy.

Obsidian Overview

Obsidian Security unifies SaaS and AI security for the enterprise, combining SaaS security posture management (SSPM), third-party integration risk, AI governance, and Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR). It correlates real-time activity and breach intelligence in a knowledge graph, using self-learning detection to catch threats like account takeovers, token compromise, and OAuth abuse. AI governance extends to major ecosystems including Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, Amazon Bedrock, Google Vertex, Anthropic Claude, and Salesforce Agentforce.

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

Living Security: Onboarding centers on a quick-start path that stands up a tenant in minutes, with visual dashboards at the organization, segment, department, and individual level. An embedded AI assistant (Livvy) lowers the learning curve, though most of the effort is upfront: connecting identity, training, phishing, and email security tools so the platform has data to correlate.

Obsidian: Getting started takes minutes, since the platform is agentless and API-based with no agents to deploy. Users cite correlating SaaS and AI activity in one place as a time-saver during investigations, and describe the overall learning curve as reasonable for an enterprise platform.

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

Living Security: Living Security works from the inside out, correlating signals from an organization’s existing security, identity, and training tools into a per-person risk score, then driving targeted training, nudges, and automated controls at the individuals who account for most exposure. Its value depends entirely on the integrations connected to it; a thin toolset limits what it can see, and it doesn’t address vendor risk or external attack surface.

**Obsidian: **Obsidian protects the SaaS and identity layer directly, correlating real-time activity, app configurations, and breach intelligence in a knowledge graph to catch live threats such as account takeovers and OAuth abuse, and applying the same model to govern AI agent usage. Reporting is the most cited weakness: dashboards are described as limited. As a newer SSPM entrant, its threat catalog is still maturing relative to established players.

UpGuard: Offers real-time visibility into any third-party vendor’s risk posture and security rating along with total automation for managing vendor due diligence and remediation programs.

Community support

**Living Security: **Day-to-day support runs on an always-on AI chat assistant that escalates to a ticket queue targeting a 48-business-hour response, with a separate critical-support path for urgent issues outside standard hours.

Obsidian: Support is high-touch: customers get dedicated Customer Success Managers and Technical Account Managers who guide implementation and prioritize feature requests. Standard support tiers and SLAs aren’t publicly documented; they’re arranged through enterprise agreements.

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

Living Security: Does not maintain a public changelog or version-by-version release notes. Product news surfaces instead through its blog and Newsroom, including milestone announcements like the launch of its AI-native platform, and it publishes no fixed release schedule.

Obsidian: It also has no dedicated changelog, but product updates appear as “Product Spotlight” posts on its blog, alongside news, research, and security-advisory content. Updates are tied to feature launches rather than a fixed release schedule.

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

Living Security: Pricing isn’t published. It’s sold as a required base subscription plus one of three Action Packages (Train, Engage, Adapt), with phishing simulations, AI content generation, and professional services priced as separate add-ons. There’s no free plan or trial; evaluation runs through a sales-led demo. See Living Security’s pricing.

Obsidian: A clear tier structure is published: Free, Foundations, and Advanced. The free plan covers up to 1,000 users for SaaS-sprawl and shadow-AI discovery plus spear-phishing detection; Foundations and Advanced are quote-only, priced by headcount and scaled by modules selected. A free trial is also available. See Obsidian Security’s pricing.

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

Living Security: Technical documentation covers APIs for programmatic access to risk data and platform actions, though detailed references are gated behind a customer login. Its Entity Graph unifies identity data pulled from HRIS, SSO, endpoint, and email sources into a single profile per person, and integrations extend to outbound actions like opening ITSM tickets or triggering access-control changes based on a person’s risk score.

Obsidian: An agentless, API-based architecture pulls real-time activity, app configuration, and identity telemetry straight from connected platforms rather than requiring installed agents, then routes alerts and supporting evidence to operational tools like Jira and Splunk for response. A browser extension extends that visibility further, tracking users and compromised accounts as they move between apps and devices.

UpGuard: Offers a standard API to pull data from UpGuard’s platform into other enterprise applications.

Third-party integrations

Living Security: Its Technology Alliance Program connects the platform to Microsoft (Azure, Defender, Intune), Okta, SailPoint, CrowdStrike, Proofpoint, Mimecast, KnowBe4, Netskope, Zscaler, Rapid7, and Workday.

Obsidian: Core SaaS platforms connect directly: Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Okta, Salesforce, Snowflake, Databricks, GitHub, ServiceNow, and Workday. Major AI ecosystems connect too (Bedrock, Claude, ChatGPT, Vertex, Copilot, OpenAI, Agentforce), with alerts routed to Jira and Splunk.

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

Customers

Living Security: Verizon, JPMorgan, CVS Health, Lockheed Martin, and Ford.

Obsidian: Snowflake, T-Mobile, Databricks, S&P Global, and Seagate.

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

Living Security vs Obsidian Security

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