Are you confused by what digital risk/threat/attack surface management vendors actually do? You’re not alone.

As organizations expand their presence across web, mobile, social, and the cloud to innovate, scale, and better interact with customers, their business moves outside the protection of traditional security programs. This digital transformation involves standing up thousands of digital assets that companies may or may not know about. Meanwhile, attackers pump out thousands more that impersonate these brands to target their customers and employees. Combined, all these assets make up a digital attack surface that is beyond the purview of security teams in many organizations.

As a result, over the past few years, businesses have faced a torrent of breaches originating outside the firewall that have had disastrous consequences for their victims.

Unfortunately, like the corporate digital attack surface itself, the landscape of cybersecurity companies that claim to help defend your organization beyond the corporate perimeter has become overwhelmingly vast and continues to grow every day. With a cacophony of mixed messages flooding the market, shopping for a practical solution that solves the problem of monitoring your digital attack surface for risk has become a nightmare.

Some vendors claim to do much more than they’re capable of. Some are so frustratingly vague that it’s impossible to determine what they do. Others say they do it all but are more of a point solution, while some do a variety of things but appear to only specialize in one. It’s a headache.

To help out security folks considering RiskIQ, we are introducing a series of blogs comparing and contrasting us with vendors with which we are often compared. To begin, we’ll be looking at BitSight and Expanse.

Expanse:

Two names that come up frequently in conversations around mapping and monitoring a digital attack surface are RiskIQ and Expanse. Because these companies both show what a company’s web-facing presence looks like to attackers, they’re often compared and even confused for one another. However, there are enormous differences in how they go about mapping and monitoring their customers’ digital presences.

Download “Three Critical Areas of Digital Attack Surface Management: Where Does Your Solution Stand?” Here.

BitSight:

Some organizations turn to risk scorecard solutions such as BitSight for the evaluation of third-party vendor risk, but how useful is BitSight in helping organizations reduce the risks in their own attack surface? As overlapping vendor messages can make it difficult to gain a clear understanding of the differences between the different solution offerings, we hope to clear up some of the confusion.  

Download “RiskIQ vs. BitSight: Which is more useful for Digital Attack Surface Management?” here.

Make the right choice

Over the next several months, our vendor Compare and Contrast Series will analyze even more solutions to help you make a better choice when equipping your security team to manage your digital attack surface. Stay tuned for Digital Shadows and Recorded Future next.