SecurityScorecard vs RiskRecon product overview
Learn more about the products and how they compare.
Overview
As outsourcing significant business functions is now common practice for most organizations, major third-party data breaches are rapidly taking over news headlines.
Ponemon Institute and IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach Report found the average cost of a breach has increased from $370,000 to $4.35 million, with third-party involvement listed as one of the main reasons. An eSentire surveyfrom the same year highlights that 44% of firms surveyed have experienced a significant data breach caused by a third-party vendor.
With Gartner reporting 60% of organizations as having 1000+ third-party relationships, effectively managing the cybersecurity risks they create and practicing vendor due diligence proves increasingly difficult.
Information security teams often also rely on manual risk reporting methods which are time and labor-intensive. Many organizations are now turning to automated third-party risk management (TPRM) solutions that automate data breach detection capabilities, provide real-time insights, and streamline remediation workflows.
We assess three TPRM solutions, SecurityScorecard, RiskRecon, and UpGuard, to help you make an informed decision before investing in the right solution for your needs.
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.
SecurityScorecard UI. Source: securityscorecard.com
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. 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
Minimizing the amount of time and effort in learning to use a new solution is a critical aspect of delivering on any value proposition.
SecurityScorecard and UpGuard offer their services via SaaS and are accessible from web-based platforms that can help users monitor and manage vendor risks.
SecurityScorecard: Simple interface for quick grade reports and charts.
RiskRecon: Provides dashboard visibility for risk prioritization based on configured policy. Cloud based platform offers minimal need for installation.
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
SecurityScorecard, RiskRecon, and UpGuard help organizations stay informed about their vendors’ information security risks as part of a third-party risk management (TPRM) program.
SecurityScorecard: Provides security ratings that aggregate different risks into a single score, allowing for the comparison of different third-party vendors and service providers.
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.
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 security developments is paramount, with new vulnerabilities and cyber threats emerging daily.
Customers need up-to-date resources and relevant insights to stay ahead of the curve and protect their organizations from emerging cyber risks.
The frequency of publication and presence of community engagement is a key indicator of a company’s mission, focus, and investment in its users.
SecurityScorecard, RiskRecon, and UpGuard offer comprehensive online resources to educate and inform customers.
SecurityScorecard: SecurityScoreCard offers a user Academy for customer users along with a regularly updated company blog, webinar series, and resource center.
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 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
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.
SecurityScorecard: SecurityScoreCard makes releases as needed throughout the year, consistently enabling customer users to access information logs of beneficial changes.
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 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.
SecurityScorecard: Public pricing information is not available. Reports say SecurityScorecard’s pricing starts at $16,500 for self-assessment plus five vendors, and additional vendors cost $1,500-$2,000 per vendor per year.
RiskRecon: Public pricing information is not available. RiskRecon’s pricing is reported to 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
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.
SecurityScorecard, RiskRecon, and UpGuard offer APIs.
SecurityScorecard: SecurityScoreCard offers API connections for users seeking greater security ratings extensibility.
RiskRecon: Offers a standard API to create extensibility for RiskRecon cybersecurity ratings.
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.
SecurityScorecard, RiskRecon, and UpGuard offer integrations into other platforms.
SecurityScorecard: Offers integrations with several third party platforms such as RSA Archer, ServiceNow, and more.
RiskRecon: Offers integrations with GRC platforms, such as RSA Archer, Sigma Ratings, Whistic, and more.
Customers
SecurityScorecard: Major customers include Symantec, Pepsico, Two Sigma, and Stony Brook University.
RiskRecon: Major customers include Informatica, Tufts Health Plan, University of San Francisco, and Sentara.
UpGuard: Major customers across highly regulated sectors include Accenture, New York Stock Exchange, Tech Mahindra, & Morningstar.
Security rating
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.
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.