RiskIQ vs SecurityScorecard product overview
Learn more about the products and how they compare.
Overview
Every week the news is full of new exposures of protected health information (PHI) and personally identifiable information (PII). These security incidents are not only more common but also more costly.
The average cost of a data breach is now nearly $4 million globally and third-party vendors, cyber attacks, and misconfiguration are three of the main culprits.
Many of these exposures are caused by accidental data leaks rather than deliberate data breaches, which is why cyber risk management and vendor risk management are top priorities for CISOs, Vice Presidents of Security, and senior management. And they’re increasingly important at the board level.
Every organization must now invest in tools to prevent data breaches and reduce cybersecurity risk: particularly risks stemming from third and fourth-parties.
The introduction of general data protection laws around the world has introduced or widened the scope of mandatory data breach notification laws, significantly increasing reputational and regulatory impact.
In the United States, California has introduced CCPA, Florida has introduced FIPA, and New York has launched the SHIELD Act. Outside of the United States, two well-known examples are the European Union’s GDPR and Brazil’s LGPD.
Additionally, many of these laws have broadened the definition of sensitive data. This means what were once small security incidents are now reportable data breaches, adding to the impact of inadequate risk management.
Security teams have more to worry about than ever before. Their job now not only involves developing information security policies and improving cybersecurity postures but increasingly, translating technical terms for non-technical stakeholders.
There are tools that can help, such as UpGuard, the issue it’s hard to know which one is the best for you. We wrote this guide with all this in mind, to give you a clear comparison between RiskIQ, SecurityScorecard, and UpGuard, so you can make an informed decision and choose the tool that is right for you.
RiskIQ Overview
RiskIQ is a cybersecurity company based in San Francisco, California. RiskIQ provides cloud-based software as a service for organizations to manage their attack surface and detect phishing, fraud, malware, and other online security threats.
RiskIQ was founded in 2009 by Lou Manousos, Chris Kiernan, and David Pon.

RiskIQ UI. Source: riskiq.com
SecurityScorecard Overview
SecurityScorecard is a New York-based security ratings platform that uses traffic and other publicly accessible data to build security ratings to evaluate vendors and manage cyber risk among other use cases.
SecurityScoreCard also monitors “hacker chatter” and other public data feeds for indicators of compromise.

The Security Scorecard UI. Source: securityscorecard.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.
RiskIQ, SecurityScorecard, and UpGuard offer their services via SaaS and are accessible from web-based platforms that can help users monitor and manage vendor risks.
RiskIQ: Its threat intelligence tool maps internet-facing assets and provides insights and prioritized remediation recommendations based on asset criticality, context, and threat severity.
SecurityScorecard: Simple interface for quick grade reports and charts.
UpGuard: Clean interface offers intuitive navigation to precise risk insights, workflow management, and reporting. Cloud-based platform provides turnkey deployment with no installation required.
Capabilities
RiskIQ: Primarily focuses on first-party attack surface management and first-party external threats like social media impersonation and phishing, which is only one of the many ways that an organization can suffer from a data breach, cyber-attack, or data leak.
SecurityScorecard: Provides security ratings that aggregate different risks into a single score, allowing for the comparison of different third-party vendors and service providers.
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.
A significant point of difference between SecurityScorecard and UpGuard is the amount of time required to perform a non-intrusive scan.
SecurityScorecard takes 10 days to perform a non-intrusive scan across the entire IPv4 web space, whereas UpGuard’s scan is completed in just 24 hours. Shorter scanning times mean open ports and misconfigured services have less chance of being exploited by cybercriminals, Smaller scan frequencies help you discover critical data breach risks, like open ports, faster.
Community support
Keeping informed on product updates and the latest cyber securitydevelopments 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.
RiskIQ, SecurityScorecard, and UpGuard offer comprehensive online resources to educate and inform customers.
RiskIQ: Company and product blog.
SecurityScorecard: SecurityScoreCard offers a user Academy for customer users along with a regularly updated company blog, webinar series, and resource center.
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.
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.
**RiskIQ: **
SecurityScorecard: SecurityScoreCard makes releases as needed throughout the year, consistently enabling customer users to access information logs of beneficial changes.
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.
RiskIQ: Rumored to start at $35 per 1,000 analyzed pages per year or $150,000 per analyzed brand plus cumulative consumer downloads per year for mobile products.
SecurityScorecard: Public pricing information is not available. Reports say pricing starts at $16,500 for self-assessment plus five vendors, and additional vendors cost $1,500-$2,000 per vendor per year.
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
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.
RiskIQ, SecurityScorecard, and UpGuard offer APIs.
**RiskIQ: **
SecurityScorecard: SecurityScoreCard offers API connections for users seeking greater security ratings extensibility
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.
RiskIQ, SecurityScorecard, and UpGuard offer integrations into other platforms.
RiskIQ: Integrates with Cloudflare, Splunk, Crowdstrike, Qualys, Rapid7, ServiceNow, and more.
SecurityScorecard: Offers integrations with several third party platforms such as RSA Archer, ServiceNow, and more.
Customers
RiskIQ: Customers include Amazon, Disney, Box, Facebook, McKesson, Toyota, United, Pepsi, Rackspace, DocuSign, and American Express.
SecurityScorecard: Major customers include Hershey, Cleveland Clinic, Avangrid, and ADT.
UpGuard: Major customers across highly regulated sectors include Accenture, New York Stock Exchange, Tech Mahindra, and Morningstar.
Security rating
RiskIQ: Focuses on first-party attack surface management and does not provide a real solution for third-party risk management.
SecurityScorecard: Provides a security rating on a numerical scale from 0-100 with letter scale breakdowns ranged within an A - F report card based scale.
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.