A side-by-side comparison of RiskIQ with its main competitors. Easily compare performance across multiple categories and understand what the market is saying with independent reviews.
A side-by-side comparison of RiskIQ with its main competitors. Easily compare performance across multiple categories and understand what the market is saying with independent reviews.
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.
Primarily focuses on first-party risk rather than taking a holistic view of cybersecurity.
Bitsight is a cybersecurity ratings platform that continuously monitors organizational and vendor security postures. It collects and analyzes data from multiple sources—including botnet and malware intelligence—to offer evidence-based risk insights. Bitsight also integrates with GRC and TPRM workflows, allowing teams to proactively mitigate threats across their extended supply chain. However, Bitsight's pricing structure can complicate scalability.
SecurityScorecard is a cybersecurity ratings platform that monitors external-facing vendor networks. It aggregates risk signals from various sources to produce vendor security ratings. SecurityScorecard integrates with SIEM and GRC tools and provides insights that mitigate supply chain attacks. However, risk assessment workflows are managed separately via the Atlas module, which can lead to fragmented processes that could delay vendor assessment delivery and impact program efficiency.
Provides a security questionnaire and vendor due diligence information exchange to help reduce the operational overhead of traditionally manual and point in time assessments.
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.
In addition to risk monitoring, Bitsight employs analytical forecasting to estimate future security trajectories. It integrates with platforms like ServiceNow, JIRA, and PowerBI to suit more advanced workflows. This network of partnerships, coupled with strong institutional acceptance, reinforces Bitsight's profile with complex organizations.
SecurityScorecard covers an extensive range of cyber intelligence, drawing from open, proprietary, and dark web sources to identify vendor security risks and assess IP reputation risks. SecurityScorecard's well-known A-F letter grade system makes it approachable for executives and large enterprises.
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.
Bitsight's pricing structures can quickly escalate operational expenses for TPRM programs and create complicated decisions regarding the extent of risk visibility that can be deployed for vendors within a supply chain. Customers additionally cite attribution challenges for risks and assets within shared IP and cloud environments, which require support request submissions to address. Monitoring and assessment capabilities are also separately licensed, which may increase purchasing complexity and limit end-to-end coverage to several vendors within supply chains.
SecurityScorecard's staggered scan cycles disrupts real-time vendor security posture visibility. IP attribution issues are also cited as common scanning problems. Additionally, vendor monitoring and risk assessments are licensed separately, which may increase purchasing complexity and limit coverage of end-to-end visibility of supply chain vendors.
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.
Its threat intelligence tool maps internet-facing assets and provides insights and prioritized remediation recommendations based on asset criticality, context, and threat severity.
Bitsight is generally intuitive for professionals familiar with security ratings, with an interface offering clear vendor risk summaries. However, some advanced features require more expertise and time to leverage effectively, particularly when deploying Bitsight's separate modules for monitoring and risk assessments.
SecurityScorecard's dashboards and clear A-F grading help non-technical stakeholders quickly grasp vendor risk exposure. However, some users report multiple drill-down steps required to reach specific risk insights, which could lengthen new user learning curves.
Risks detailed on point-in-time vendor assessment coupled with continuous monitoring of inherent risk, threat intelligence, and risk scoring. The exchange model forces more frequent point in time assessments, as many as 2-3 times each year.
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.
Relies on first-party attack surface management by monitoring your digital footprint (websites, domains, public-facing assets, as well as javascript resources, and typosquatted domains), as well as external threats like phishing, deep and dark web discussions, email spoofing, and other cyber threats.
Bitsight is widely recognized for malware and botnet reporting, though attribution to hosting providers or shared IP ranges can lead to accuracy challenges requiring correction support.
SecurityScorecard offers extensive data collection across public-facing and dark web sources, though users occasionally report inaccurate attribution or misflagged IPs requiring support.
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.
Bitsight supports third-party monitoring and risk workflows, including vendor onboarding, but relies on a separately licensed module for vendor risk assessments and workflows.
SecurityScorecard's VRM workflow requires a separate module named Atlas for security questionnaire and risk assessment processes. This can introduce complexity into this process.
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.
Bitsight's External Attack Surface Management module is designed to discover hidden assets, provide detailed digital asset insights, and detect vulnerabilities such as unsupported product versions.
SecurityScorecard offers views into an organization's attack surface by leveraging IP scanning and attribution of identified domains and assets. The platform's approach helps users identify potential weaknesses in their digital footprint that an attacker might exploit.
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.
Offers a company and product blog.
Bitsight provides reputable support, particularly for large enterprises with dedicated account teams. Smaller organizations may experience less responsiveness and find self-service documentation limited.
Generally supportive for enterprise levels, with a community of free users. However, customers at lower licensing tiers report slower responses and less personalized support.
ProcessUnity (formerly CyberGRX) offers extensive community support sharing best platform and program practices via regularly updated podcasts, webinars, whitepapers, and strategic partnerships.
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.
Bitsight integrates with SOAR platforms, allowing users to automate responses to newly discovered risks. However, advanced automation requirements, such as those addressing Vendor Risk Management workflows, require add-on services or third-party tools for complete automation.
SecurityScorecard's workflow automation features let users create rule-based triggers that automatically respond to security events, such as score drops, new high-severity issues, or breaches. Users can choose from a range of automated response actions, including alert activation, report sharing, and reassigning scorecards for further review
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.
Bitsight offers a branded AI capability named Groma. Groma is primarily built to support improved risk scoring, identification and attribution of digital assets, and enhanced criticality classification of risk findings. Bitsight is additionally investing in AI development for TPRM workflows and threat detection capabilities. However, whether this will add to their Groma-branded capability or be released as integrated, separate offerings is unclear.
SecurityScorecard offers a branded AI capability named HEID. HEID’s operational workflows are primarily geared toward SecurityScoreCard's MAX managed service offering, with claims that AI can generate automated remediation and questionnaire requests as risks arise. SecurityScorecard claims that HEID AI is available as a backend capability for customers with non-service plans, and it is used in its algorithms for risk scoring and classification of issue criticality.
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.
Integrates with Cloudflare, Splunk, Crowdstrike, Qualys, Rapid7, ServiceNow, and more.
Bitsight integrates with popular platforms like ServiceNow and Splunk, offering APIs for custom reporting and automation. Offers integrations with RSA Archer GRC, CyberGRX, OneTrust Vendorpedia, ProcessUnity, MetricStream, and more.
SecurityScoreCard offers an extensive marketplace of integrations with security, GRC, and workflow platforms. However, integrations tend to primarily focus on score visibility in other platforms rather than workflow extensibility. Offers integrations with several third-party platforms, such as RSA Archer, ServiceNow, and more.
ProcessUnity (formerly CyberGRX) offers a fully functional bidirectional API.
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.
Pricing not available on the website.
Public pricing is not available. Does not publically offer a free trial.
Public pricing information is not available. Offers a free plan and a 14-day free trial for paid plans.
ProcessUnity (formerly CyberGRX) lists typical engagements as starting at around $120,000 USD. This includes validated assessments data, and unlimited access to the CyberGRX Exchange.
Customers
UpGuard customers include Intercontinental Exchange (NYSE: ICE), Morningstar, TDK, PagerDuty, Hopin, and IAG. Read UpGuard’s customer stories to learn more.
Major customers include Amazon, Disney, Box, Facebook, McKesson, Toyota, United, Pepsi, Rackspace, DocuSign, and American Express.
Major customers include Optus / Singtel, The University of North Florida, Snam, and PROSA.
Major customers include Hershey, Cleveland Clinic, Avangrid, and ADT.
Major customers include Medibank Private, Mass Mutual, QBE, Solix, and McAfee.
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.
RiskIQ’s platform provides insight and automation needed to map and monitor your organization’s internet-exposed digital attack surface, understand and mitigate exposures, and expedite external threat investigation.
RiskIQ’s threat detection and asset management platform finds known assets like your corporate website, microsites, and any other public-facing internet assets, unknown assets like third-party JavaScript resources, and rogue or malicious assets like typosquatted domains and abandoned servers.
RiskIQ Use Cases
RiskIQ ocuses on first-party attack surface management and does not provide a real solution for third-party risk management.
While RiskIQ is useful for assessing your own attack surface and may be sufficient to complete other assessment techniques when evaluating first-party risk, it has real limitations when applied to improving your organization’s complete security posture.
You can’t manage what you don’t know about. An accurate and up to date inventory of you and your vendors’ public-facing digital assets is a must for any cybersecurity program. It’s no longer enough to only manage your own security posture. You need to know that your vendors are keeping the data you provide them safe too.
RiskIQ Demo / Trial
Potential RiskIQ (now Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence and Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management) customers can contact Microsoft Azure Sales to learn more about the products’ capabilities.
RiskIQ API
RiskIQ provides a standard API.
RiskIQ reviews
Reviews of the RiskIQ platform and its top competitors, based on independent third-party sources and customer insights.
Gartner Peer Insights Overall ratings for the IT VRM Solutions market. Accurate as of January 2024
4.4, based on 160 reviews. Named a Representative Vendor in the 2022 Gartner Market Guide for IT VRM Solutions
4.5, based on 261 reviews
4.5, based on 259 reviews.
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.
