Bitsight Third-Party Risk Management vs. Zscaler Internet Access

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

It's best suited for a distributed remote workforce, securing internet access for users from anywhere. Suitable for highly regulated industries, such as banking and Healthcare. Not a good fit for an organisation where most of its legacy is in an on-premises environment. Bandwidth-intensive industries like media/entertainment firms.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

• Single Pane of Glass Management - Everything is very easy to access and monitor the entire environment from an internet security perspective.
• Install Flexibility - We can and do install Zscaler Internet Access on both our client devices as well as our SD-WAN appliances and servers. This allows us to control internet security even on devices without an agent in our networks.

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

• The logs feel kind of lack luster
• When issues are arising with SSL Inspection, logs show everything working despite end user experience
• Could use some kind of global find functionality or something that would allow you to search the entire configuration for matching URLs and the like

Incentivized

While Zscaler Internet Access (ZIA) delivers critical value in cloud security and RBI compliance, I rate renewal likelihood 7/10 due to evolving needs versus platform limitations. Below is my rationale:

Key Gaps:

1. Advanced Threat Costs:

ZIA’s add-ons (e.g., Advanced DLP, Sandboxing) incur 35%+ cost premiums – straining budgets as transaction volumes (UPI/iMobile) grow 50% YoY.

2. API Banking Scalability:

ZIA’s API rate limits throttle real-time policy sync during UPI peaks (10K+ TPS), forcing workarounds for finacle integrations.

3. RBI Future-Proofing:

Limited native support for upcoming digital rupee (CBDC) security rules requires custom development, increasing compliance overhead.

Incentivized

The application is easy to install and configure on all Windows devices. To troubleshoot any internet issue, we can easily collect all the relevant logs from Zscaler and check the exact issue. The only problem is with the uninstall, as a dedicated crew needs to provide the password.

Incentivized

There are often performance issues reported

Incentivized

Zscaler's ZIA support is quick and knowledgable. They respond within 1-2 hours of you submitting your ticket. They are very thorough and are typically ready to jump on a live troubleshooting session. Our ZIA platform and how we use is it unique so at times tickets can be open for weeks but we alway get quality support compared to other unrelated product support in our enterprise

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

Zscaler Intenet Access outperformed the competition due to its lightning-fast policy delivery and cross-compatibility. It is easy to track employee usage and block unnecessary websites, reducing company internet usage. Zscalar installed on every system increases cloud-based software bandwidth, decreasing user turnaround time and increasing efficiency.

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

• Has allowed us to remove other products that were suboptimal
• Saved us money overall by stacking it with other Zscaler products
• Created a more secure work environment for our users through intelligent internet policies that are not needlessly restrictive while still maintaining security best practices

Incentivized