SecurityScorecard Alternative for SMB & Mid-Market

Who each is built for

SecurityScorecard

Fortune 1000 enterprises
Third-party risk management programs monitoring 100s–1,000s of vendors
Cyber-insurance underwriters (Coalition, At-Bay, Resilience partnerships)
MSSPs building vendor-risk offerings
Regulated industries (financial services, healthcare at scale)
Organizations with internal security teams and GRC tooling already in place

Cyvatar

Organizations under 3,000 employees
No dedicated security team (or a small one)
Want to know their own external posture — not rate 500 vendors
Cloud-first SMB stack (M365 / Google Workspace)
Flat monthly pricing, no enterprise contracts
Need a partner who actually fixes findings — not just reports them

Feature comparison

All claims below are drawn from publicly available product documentation as of 2026-04-21. See each vendor's website for the authoritative source.

Capability	SecurityScorecard	Cyvatar
External risk rating / scorecard	✓	✓
Continuous monitoring	✓	✓
Third-party vendor monitoring at scale (100+ vendors)	✓ (core strength)	— (SMBs have fewer vendors)
Cyber-insurance underwriting integrations	✓	—
Hacker-chatter / dark-web threat intel	✓ (paid feeds)	— (not in v1)
Credential leak / HIBP-style check	✓	✓ (HIBP integration)
MFA posture inference (external)	—	✓
Microsoft Teams / Storm-1811 vishing exposure	—	✓
Customer-owned CIDR block enumeration (scoping)	partial	✓
Lookalike domain detection with brand-ownership classification	✓ (Social Engineering category)	✓ (brand-owned vs. third-party split)
SaaS / supply-chain footprint depth	partial	✓ (100+ vendor patterns)
Transparent scoring (show the math)	partial	✓ (every Risk Area)
Managed remediation — fix what's found	—	✓ (Agentic vCISO included)
SMB-friendly flat monthly pricing	—	✓

What SecurityScorecard does really well

Let's be honest — SecurityScorecard is a category leader for good reason.

Vendor monitoring at scale. Their core product is designed for security teams that need to assess and monitor hundreds or thousands of third-party vendors. The workflow, integrations, and reporting are purpose-built for that job.
Insurance underwriting partnerships. Multiple cyber-insurance carriers use SecurityScorecard ratings as an underwriting signal. That's real-world validation of the rating methodology.
Hacker chatter / threat intelligence feeds. They license paid threat intel that includes dark-web mentions and ransomware actor activity — a genuine differentiator no free tool can match.
GRC integrations. Pre-built connectors for ServiceNow, Archer, OneTrust, and dozens of other enterprise GRC platforms.

What Cyvatar adds for SMBs

Different focus, not better-than.

Managed delivery. A rating tells you what's broken. Cyvatar fixes it. Our Agentic vCISO team actually closes gaps — we don't hand you a PDF and walk away.
MFA posture inference. We probe Microsoft login endpoints + Entra device-registration DNS to infer whether MFA is likely enforced tenant-wide. SecurityScorecard does not publish an external MFA signal today.
Microsoft Teams exposure detection. We check for lyncdiscover, sip, and _sipfederationtls DNS records that indicate your tenant is discoverable from external Teams clients — the attack pattern Microsoft documents as Storm-1811 (Black Basta affiliate vishing).
Customer-vs-cloud IP classification. We classify each IP we find as firewall-likely (your edge), cloud-excluded (Microsoft 365, Google, AWS — not yours to defend), or investigate. You get a real scoping list, not a wall of IPs that don't matter.
Transparent scoring. Every Risk Area shows the math — starting score, each deduction, and a rationale with sources (CISA KEV, FBI IC3, Verizon DBIR, Microsoft Threat Intelligence). Click "Show the math" on any card.
Brand-owned lookalike classification. If you've registered example.net and example.io defensively, we detect it via MX/IP match and exclude them from your score. SecurityScorecard's Social Engineering category sometimes counts defensive registrations as threats.

Frequently asked questions

Is Cyvatar cheaper than SecurityScorecard?

For small and mid-sized businesses, yes. SecurityScorecard's enterprise pricing typically starts in the tens of thousands of dollars per year and scales with the number of vendors monitored. Cyvatar is priced for SMB and mid-market budgets with flat monthly plans and includes managed delivery — the Cyvatar team actually fixes what the scan finds.

Does Cyvatar replace SecurityScorecard?

Not for enterprise vendor risk management. SecurityScorecard is built for Fortune 1000 third-party risk programs, cyber-insurance underwriting, and continuous monitoring of hundreds or thousands of vendors. Cyvatar is built for organizations under 3,000 employees who want their own external posture scored and fixed — not a platform to rate their supply chain at scale.

What does Cyvatar's free scan include?

The free Cyvatar scan rates your external risk across 13 Risk Areas: Software Patching, Web Encryption, Application Security, Network Filtering, DNS Security, Email Security, Identity & Access (MFA inference), Collaboration Exposure, Attack Surface Discovery, SaaS & Supply Chain, Breach Events, Brand Impersonation, and System Reputation. Every finding shows the math and cites sources (CISA KEV, FBI IC3, Verizon DBIR, Microsoft Threat Intelligence, and more).

Can I use Cyvatar and SecurityScorecard together?

Yes. Many mid-market organizations use SecurityScorecard-style ratings for vendor assessment while using Cyvatar for their own security program delivery. The tools serve different purposes.

Does Cyvatar detect Microsoft Teams vishing exposure like Storm-1811?

Yes. Cyvatar's scan includes Collaboration Exposure — we check for lyncdiscover, sip, and _sipfederationtls DNS records that indicate Teams external federation is discoverable. This is the pattern Microsoft-documented attackers like Storm-1811 and Black Basta exploit. SecurityScorecard does not currently detect this externally.

Does Cyvatar infer MFA posture from external signals?

Yes. Cyvatar probes Microsoft login endpoints (GetCredentialType, GetUserRealm) plus DNS records for enterpriseregistration and enterpriseenrollment to infer whether Entra ID / Azure AD has MFA-relevant configuration. We can tell the difference between "federated to Okta" vs. "managed with no device management" — which correlates strongly with MFA enforcement. This is an external-only signal; it's not as good as a direct tenant audit but it's the best publicly-observable inference available.

Does Cyvatar remediate the findings it reports?

Yes. Cyvatar's Agentic vCISO includes managed delivery — our team actually closes the gaps. SecurityScorecard is a rating platform, not a security provider. If they surface a finding, you still need a separate team to fix it.

Who is SecurityScorecard built for?

SecurityScorecard is an excellent platform for Fortune 1000 enterprises, cyber-insurance underwriters, MSSPs, and third-party risk management programs with hundreds-to-thousands of vendors to monitor. They rate 12+ million companies and integrate with dozens of GRC platforms. For those buyers, they are a market leader.

SecurityScorecard Alternative
for Organizations Under 3,000 Employees

Who each is built for