RiskRecon vs UpGuard: 2025 Comparison

RiskRecon vs UpGuard
Category	UpGuard	RiskRecon
General summary	UpGuard is an end-to-end third-party risk management platform with best-in-class time-to-value and scalability from initial implementations to beyond. UpGuard delivers powerful, integrated tools for automated third-party monitoring, in-depth risk assessment and remediation, and one-click reporting. By combining actionable insights with built-in risk management workflows, UpGuard helps organizations maintain comprehensive oversight of their supply chain security posture and equips them with the necessary tools to shut down emerging risks rapidly.	RiskRecon specializes in external security monitoring and asset attribution with strong accuracy and strong cloud scanning capabilities, which are particularly valuable for IT-centric organizations. Owned by Mastercard, RiskRecon has stable financial backing and solid scanning accuracy. However, it remains primarily focused on external scan strengths and takes a partnership-first approach to TPRM workflows.
Key strengths	UpGuard excels by completing full vendor scans every 24 hours, which provides near real-time visibility into vendor security postures while seamlessly integrating native end-to-end AI-powered vendor assessment workflows. UpGuard's licensing model and efficient learning curve offer best-in-class time to value and program efficiency.	RiskRecon provides a notably accurate external scanning solution and offers practical remediation guidance. It even prioritizes vulnerabilities by asset value for IT teams.
Key weaknesses	UpGuard's focus on core frameworks like ISO 27001 and NIST offers robust coverage for most security and compliance needs, though organizations requiring highly specialized or region-specific regulations may choose to augment it with dedicated GRC modules. Its strengths in cybersecurity and continuous monitoring ensure strong TPCRM capabilities, but those seeking an all-encompassing governance solution (e.g., covering environmental or privacy regulations) might benefit from additional integrations.	RiskRecon takes a partnership and integration-first approach to vendor assessment workflows. This necessitates the adoption of an additional solution provider to achieve an optimal assessment experience, as supported by the RiskRecon platform.
Usability and learning curve	UpGuard offers best-in-class time to value for initial implementations. UpGuard's platform architecture is designed from the ground up to deliver a quick and shallow adoption curve. UpGuard's clean and intuitive interface ensures ease of ongoing operation and rapid pick-up from new staff members as needed.	RiskRecon is focused on delivering clear, actionable findings for IT and SecOps-centric security teams with a clean interface for surfacing and remediating risks. While its limited scope of purely external scan data can simplify usage, complications can quickly arise for those integrating RiskRecon with a partner provider for assessment workflows.
Cyber risk data accuracy	UpGuard's real-time data refresh rate ensures up-to-date and accurate vendor security posture calculations while also allowing users to initiate scans on demand. Threat Monitoring automatically scans the open, deep, and dark web for data leaks and exposed credentials, using AI-powered analysis to reduce false positives and prioritize findings for targeted, timely remediation.	RiskRecon is well regarded for accurate asset attribution, resulting in reliable and actionable insights.
Vendor risk management features	UpGuard offers a natively integrated end-to-end workflow addressing the complete Third-party Risk Management lifecycle—from onboarding to risk management and ongoing monitoring.	RiskRecon focuses on external scanning to calculate vendor risk and relies on partner integrations to offer risk assessment workflows, resulting in additional costs.
Attack surface management features	UpGuard provides continuous attack surface monitoring, identifying exposed assets, misconfigurations, and vulnerabilities. It maps internet-facing infrastructure, detects risks like expired certificates and open ports, and prioritizes threats for remediation. Clear, actionable insights help organizations reduce exposure and strengthen their external security posture.	RiskRecon focuses on high-accuracy external scanning and asset discovery, offering precise identification of vulnerabilities.
Customer support	Known for world-class support across all tiers and customer-friendly guidance, UpGuard delivers proactive and prompt engagement to resolve customer issues quickly. Dedicated teams assist with both technical and strategic TPRM challenges.	RiskRecon offers stable support with detailed product documentation and guides available.
Workflow automation	UpGuard's AI-powered Security Profile automatically identifies risks and control gaps, then generates contextualized, point-in-time assessment reports in minutes. It also provides a pre-configured (and adjustable) set of controls for two leading security frameworks: ISO 27001:2022 and NIST CSF 2.0. Custom notifications simplify tracking of critical events and prompting of important follow-up actions. The platform also facilitates automatic vendor tiering, labeling, and custom attributes based on questionnaire responses for faster vendor onboarding and improved TPRM scalability.	It primarily automates external scanning and asset discovery, generating action plans and prioritized remediations. However, it lacks built-in automation for the end-to-end assessment cycle, relying on integrations or manual processes.
Artificial intelligence features	UpGuard’s AI-powered platform streamlines the entire vendor assessment process. AI evidence analysis combined with automated scanning immediately uncovers control gaps and risks. Each finding is accompanied by transparent, traceable citations so security teams can quickly verify sources and take action. AI-generated risk assessment reports, which are typically produced in under a minute, help organizations rapidly communicate risks with stakeholders. This results in faster decision-making, more accurate and consistent reporting, and significantly reduced manual workloads.	Risk Recon uses AI to primarily support the detection of potential risks and vulnerabilities in supplier security postures. However, its use of AI to support vendor assessments highly depends on capabilities made available by partner providers.
API and integrations	UpGuard provides a well-documented API enabling custom integrations, webhooks, and automation across common security and GRC tools. Its extensibility is straightforward, designed for rapid deployment and minimal setup friction. UpGuard also connects with over 4,000+ apps through a dedicated Zapier integration. Streamlines remediation and monitoring by natively integrating with Jira, Service Now, and Slack.	RiskRecon features basic integration options for exporting findings and connecting with ticketing systems or GRC solutions. Offers integrations with GRC platforms, such as RSA Archer, Sigma Ratings, Whistic, and more.
Purchasing & licensing transparency	UpGuard offers a freemium package for monitoring up to 5 vendors. Also provides free access to an AI-powered vendor questionnaire management tool, Trust Exchange. Pricing starts at USD 1,750 / month. A 14-day free trial for paid plans is also available.	Public pricing is not available. Does not publically offer a free trial.
Customers	Major customers include The New York Stock Exchange (ICE), Morningstar, TDK, PagerDuty, Hopin, and IAG. To learn more, read UpGuard's customer stories.	Major customers include Informatica, Tufts Health Plan, the University of San Francisco, and Sentara.
G2 rating Accurate as of March 2025	4.5, based on 383 reviews. Named a G2 Market Leader for Third Party & Supplier Risk Management Software.	4.5, based on 2 reviews.
Security ratings	945 / 950	930 / 950

General summary

UpGuard is an end-to-end third-party risk management platform with best-in-class time-to-value and scalability from initial implementations to beyond. UpGuard delivers powerful, integrated tools for automated third-party monitoring, in-depth risk assessment and remediation, and one-click reporting. By combining actionable insights with built-in risk management workflows, UpGuard helps organizations maintain comprehensive oversight of their supply chain security posture and equips them with the necessary tools to shut down emerging risks rapidly.

RiskRecon specializes in external security monitoring and asset attribution with strong accuracy and strong cloud scanning capabilities, which are particularly valuable for IT-centric organizations. Owned by Mastercard, RiskRecon has stable financial backing and solid scanning accuracy. However, it remains primarily focused on external scan strengths and takes a partnership-first approach to TPRM workflows.

Key strengths

UpGuard excels by completing full vendor scans every 24 hours, which provides near real-time visibility into vendor security postures while seamlessly integrating native end-to-end AI-powered vendor assessment workflows. UpGuard's licensing model and efficient learning curve offer best-in-class time to value and program efficiency.

RiskRecon provides a notably accurate external scanning solution and offers practical remediation guidance. It even prioritizes vulnerabilities by asset value for IT teams.

Key weaknesses

UpGuard's focus on core frameworks like ISO 27001 and NIST offers robust coverage for most security and compliance needs, though organizations requiring highly specialized or region-specific regulations may choose to augment it with dedicated GRC modules. Its strengths in cybersecurity and continuous monitoring ensure strong TPCRM capabilities, but those seeking an all-encompassing governance solution (e.g., covering environmental or privacy regulations) might benefit from additional integrations.

RiskRecon takes a partnership and integration-first approach to vendor assessment workflows. This necessitates the adoption of an additional solution provider to achieve an optimal assessment experience, as supported by the RiskRecon platform.

Usability and learning curve

UpGuard offers best-in-class time to value for initial implementations. UpGuard's platform architecture is designed from the ground up to deliver a quick and shallow adoption curve. UpGuard's clean and intuitive interface ensures ease of ongoing operation and rapid pick-up from new staff members as needed.

RiskRecon is focused on delivering clear, actionable findings for IT and SecOps-centric security teams with a clean interface for surfacing and remediating risks. While its limited scope of purely external scan data can simplify usage, complications can quickly arise for those integrating RiskRecon with a partner provider for assessment workflows.

Cyber risk data accuracy

UpGuard's real-time data refresh rate ensures up-to-date and accurate vendor security posture calculations while also allowing users to initiate scans on demand. Threat Monitoring automatically scans the open, deep, and dark web for data leaks and exposed credentials, using AI-powered analysis to reduce false positives and prioritize findings for targeted, timely remediation.

RiskRecon is well regarded for accurate asset attribution, resulting in reliable and actionable insights.

Vendor risk management features

UpGuard offers a natively integrated end-to-end workflow addressing the complete Third-party Risk Management lifecycle—from onboarding to risk management and ongoing monitoring.

RiskRecon focuses on external scanning to calculate vendor risk and relies on partner integrations to offer risk assessment workflows, resulting in additional costs.

Attack surface management features

UpGuard provides continuous attack surface monitoring, identifying exposed assets, misconfigurations, and vulnerabilities. It maps internet-facing infrastructure, detects risks like expired certificates and open ports, and prioritizes threats for remediation. Clear, actionable insights help organizations reduce exposure and strengthen their external security posture.

RiskRecon focuses on high-accuracy external scanning and asset discovery, offering precise identification of vulnerabilities.

Customer support

Known for world-class support across all tiers and customer-friendly guidance, UpGuard delivers proactive and prompt engagement to resolve customer issues quickly. Dedicated teams assist with both technical and strategic TPRM challenges.

RiskRecon offers stable support with detailed product documentation and guides available.

Workflow automation

UpGuard's AI-powered Security Profile automatically identifies risks and control gaps, then generates contextualized, point-in-time assessment reports in minutes. It also provides a pre-configured (and adjustable) set of controls for two leading security frameworks: ISO 27001:2022 and NIST CSF 2.0. Custom notifications simplify tracking of critical events and prompting of important follow-up actions. The platform also facilitates automatic vendor tiering, labeling, and custom attributes based on questionnaire responses for faster vendor onboarding and improved TPRM scalability.

It primarily automates external scanning and asset discovery, generating action plans and prioritized remediations. However, it lacks built-in automation for the end-to-end assessment cycle, relying on integrations or manual processes.

Artificial intelligence features

UpGuard’s AI-powered platform streamlines the entire vendor assessment process. AI evidence analysis combined with automated scanning immediately uncovers control gaps and risks. Each finding is accompanied by transparent, traceable citations so security teams can quickly verify sources and take action. AI-generated risk assessment reports, which are typically produced in under a minute, help organizations rapidly communicate risks with stakeholders. This results in faster decision-making, more accurate and consistent reporting, and significantly reduced manual workloads.

Risk Recon uses AI to primarily support the detection of potential risks and vulnerabilities in supplier security postures. However, its use of AI to support vendor assessments highly depends on capabilities made available by partner providers.

API and integrations

UpGuard provides a well-documented API enabling custom integrations, webhooks, and automation across common security and GRC tools. Its extensibility is straightforward, designed for rapid deployment and minimal setup friction. UpGuard also connects with over 4,000+ apps through a dedicated Zapier integration. Streamlines remediation and monitoring by natively integrating with Jira, Service Now, and Slack.

RiskRecon features basic integration options for exporting findings and connecting with ticketing systems or GRC solutions. Offers integrations with GRC platforms, such as RSA Archer, Sigma Ratings, Whistic, and more.

Purchasing & licensing transparency

UpGuard offers a freemium package for monitoring up to 5 vendors. Also provides free access to an AI-powered vendor questionnaire management tool, Trust Exchange. Pricing starts at USD 1,750 / month. A 14-day free trial for paid plans is also available.

Public pricing is not available. Does not publically offer a free trial.

Customers

Major customers include The New York Stock Exchange (ICE), Morningstar, TDK, PagerDuty, Hopin, and IAG. To learn more, read UpGuard's customer stories.

Major customers include Informatica, Tufts Health Plan, the University of San Francisco, and Sentara.

G2 rating Accurate as of March 2025

4.5, based on 383 reviews. Named a G2 Market Leader for Third Party & Supplier Risk Management Software.

4.5, based on 2 reviews.

Security ratings

945 / 950

930 / 950

RiskRecon vs UpGuard product overview

Learn more about the products and how they compare.

RiskRecon and UpGuard both offer Vendor Risk Management and TPRM solutions, but with differing results. Below, we assess the capabilities of each solution to help you invest in the right solution for your specific Vendor Risk Management security needs.

RiskRecon Overview

RiskRecon is headquartered in Salt Lake City, UT, with a presence in Boston, MA, and representatives around the world. RiskRecon enables users to gain deep, risk-contextualized insight into the cybersecurity risk performance of all third parties by continuously monitoring across 11 security domains and 41 security criteria.

The platform can be used for third-party risk management, enterprise risk management, and mergers & acquisitions.

Riskrecon UI

Riskrecon UI. Source: riskrecon.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

RiskRecon and UpGuard offer their services via SaaS and are accessible from web-based platforms that can help users monitor and manage vendor risks.

RiskRecon: Cloud-based platform offers minimal need for installation. Workflow requires time to master.
UpGuard: Very intuitive workflow allows new users to master the functions of the platform very quickly. User-friendly workflow also expedites the vendor onboarding process.

“UpGuard has improved the customer experience, reduced vendor onboarding times and introduced an industry-leading security posture, to elevate our customer well above all of its competitors.”

UpGuard customer.

Capabilities

RiskRecon and UpGuard help organizations stay informed about their vendors’ information security risks as part of a third-party risk management (TPRM) program.

RiskRecon: Offers cybersecurity ratings and deep reporting capabilities to help businesses surface and manage cyber risks.
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

RiskRecon and UpGuard offer comprehensive online resources to educate and inform customers.

UpGuard’s blog content, however, is reviewed by industry experts to verify trustworthiness. UpGuard’s VRM blog content has also been regarded as more in-depth and helpful. In addition to its VRM blog, UpGuard regularly hosts a virtual summit to keep the global cybersecurity community updated with the latest VRM developments.

RiskRecon: Offers a customer user academy, consistently updated company blog, coverage of critical global security events, and a regular webinar schedule for sharing best practices.
UpGuard: UpGuard keeps the VRM community continuously updated with the latest industry developments through its blog content and quarterly summit event.

Release rate

RiskRecon: RiskRecon does not appear to publicly share regular release rates, roadmaps, or documentation for solution updates.
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.

RiskRecon: Public pricing information is not available. However, according to user reports and platform reviews, RiskRecon’s platform pricing reportedly start at $10,000 and increases based on the number of vendors monitored.
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.

RiskRecon and UpGuard offer integrations into other platforms.

RiskRecon: Offers integrations with GRC platforms such as RSA Archer, Sigma Ratings, Whistic, and more.
UpGuard:Integrates with Zapier to enable connections to 4,000+ apps; GRC platforms, ticketing systems like JIRA; VRM solutions like ServiceNow, and more.

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.

RiskRecon and UpGuard offer integrations into other platforms.

RiskRecon: Offers integrations with GRC platforms such as RSA Archer, Sigma Ratings, Whistic, and more.
UpGuard:Integrates with Zapier to enable connections to 3,000+ apps; GRC platforms, ticketing systems like JIRA; VRM solutions like ServiceNow, and more.

Customers

The best proof of the superiority of a solution comes directly from its customers. White RiskRecon services many known brands, UpGuard’s customer base includes more distinguished companies.

RiskRecon: Customers include Informatica, Tufts Health Plan, University of San Francisco, and Sentara.
UpGuard: Customers include the New York Stock Exchange (ICE), Pagerduty, TDK, IAG, and Tech Mahindra.

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 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.”

Security rating

RiskRecon: Distils its assessment criteria into a simple score from 0-10 with letter breakdowns from A-F for corresponding ranges of scores.
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.