BitSight Security Ratings 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

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

• 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

• 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’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

• 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