Bitsight Third-Party Risk Management vs. Certa vs. UpGuard Vendor Risk

If you are considering BitSight Security Ratings as a portion or bulk of a larger vendor management project you will be well served in letting the risk scores be an indication of how closely you need to examine a vendor. However, you should not base your assessment solely on the risk score provided. The risk score is based on publicly available data and can be inaccurate.

Incentivized

Our brief experience with Certa was great overall. We liked the many options it provided, and saw how easily it could help manage our company's needs. However, the app was not as intuitive to work our way through, especially for those in our company that are not tech savvy. The onboarding function was what I was most excited about while using it. The dashboard made it super easy to see the overview of a project and know the next steps that need to be taken, and help get everyone on the same page without having to send emails, calls or texts to give updates. However, when deciding whether to continue with Certa or go a different route, the choice was hard, but he had enough employees struggling and unsure on the app that made the end decision

Incentivized

UpGuard Vendor Risk is great when we need a quick view of a vendor’s external security posture, especially during fast-paced onboarding. It’s also very useful for continuous monitoring with visibility into changes at Vendor's side without repeatedly chasing vendors for updates. The only scenario it is not very helpful, is small vendors / start ups that dont have an external footprint, but in that case the questionnaire's can be used.

Incentivized

• Security hygiene tracking over time
• Understandable risk score based on observations
• Predictability model of potential cyber security issues based on security habits.

Incentivized

• It made it easy to onboard suppliers
• Internal and external team communication
• Fully customizable

Incentivized

• Helped us automate our vendor risk questionnaires
• Helps us continuously monitor our high-risk vendors
• All vendor risk data is in one place, organized by risk level, criticality, and status

Incentivized

• Since data is based on public registration IP and domain data can be stale depending on ISP/Domain registration update delays.
• Correcting a false detection is a month-long endeavor and requires the company with the impacted score to clean up BitSight's data.
• Customer service for incorrect data is convoluted and requires a deep understanding of domain registration to correct the data. The responsibility for correcting data is placed solely on the customer's shoulders.

Incentivized

• Because it is fully customizable, we felt like there were too many options. Having more of a basic template for like-minded industries would be helpful.
• Maneuvering around the app was not as easy as I'd hoped. We have several employees that aren't tech savvy, and it was hard getting them to use the app.

Incentivized

• Integration with GRC systems, ticketing platforms could be stronger
• More configurable dashboards will be helpful

Incentivized

It gives overall risk visibility into our supply chain

Incentivized

BitSight Security Ratings ranks evenly with SecurityScorecard and both below OneTrust for our use case. We needed a platform that would let us define risk for our organization and weight scores differently based on data sensitivity. BitSight and SecurityScorecard are aggregate data that can provide insight into the security habits of a potential vendor and should be considered as an addition to most vendor management projects. However, they both provide metrics based on hygiene and not on data-defined risk. In concert with a platform to evaluate risk based on data and to inform the overall evaluation of a vendor, BitSight Security Ratings can be made to shine. Just understand that you may have to validate some data.

Incentivized

We actually ended up picking JobNimbus over Certa only because we had employees that were already familier with JN and felt comfortable navigating and assisting other coworkers. It came down to JN and Certa and that was the only reason we didn't go with Certa. They were very comparable, but the few employees that are not tech savvy were having difficulties navigating Certa. I would not be opposed to using Certa in the future or recommending it to other companies.

Incentivized

We’ve evaluated other third-party security rating platforms, including those which focus heavily on questionnaires, self-assessments, and point-in-time reviews.
UpGuard's usp is continuous monitoring and external risk visibility, automated questionnaires, which reduced our reliance on manual follow-ups. That said, most tools in this space still need to be complemented with internal reviews and contract-level risk assessments, depending on the vendor and use case.

Incentivized

• Wasted resource hours cleaning up data to correct erroneous risk score.
• Extra time spent addressing calls from clients about erroneous risk score data.
• Extra time validating risk score provided by BitSight Security Ratings for potential vendors to ensure valid data.

Incentivized

• The contract software was great. We were spending money each month to have certified contracts signed and drawn up. Certa did a great job at including this feature, saving money overall.
• Once all documents and contacts are inputted, so much time and effort would be saved. We would no longer need to call, email or follow up with each other to verify that tasks were completed.

Incentivized

• reduce the time and effort spent on vendor due diligence
• it has improved our ability to identify higher-risk vendors early and focus remediation efforts where they matter most, rather than treating all vendors the same
• more informed risk decisions

Incentivized