Adaptive Shield vs Obsidian Security: Comparison 2024

Overview of Adaptive Shield

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Adaptive Shield is focused on helping enterprises secure their entire SaaS stack through posture management, and threat detection and response. It provides in-depth configuration checks across various SaaS applications, aligning them with industry best practices to avoid malware attacks that happen on using outdated agent versions. Users can see a full list of device vulnerabilities and understand the scope of each issue.  Adaptive Shield follows a holistic Zero Trust Approach, aiming to detect and mitigate threats in SaaS environments continuously. Adaptive Shield also provides a step-by-step remediation approach for these issues. Adaptive Shield typically caters to large enterprises with a customizable pricing model, making it a suitable choice for organizations with complex SaaS environments.

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Overview of Obsidian Security

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Adaptive Shield is focused on helping enterprises secure their entire SaaS stack through posture management, and threat detection and response. It provides in-depth configuration checks across various SaaS applications, aligning them with industry best practices to avoid malware attacks that happen on using outdated agent versions. Users can see a full list of device vulnerabilities and understand the scope of each issue.  Adaptive Shield follows a holistic Zero Trust Approach, aiming to detect and mitigate threats in SaaS environments continuously. Adaptive Shield also provides a step-by-step remediation approach for these issues. Adaptive Shield typically caters to large enterprises with a customizable pricing model, making it a suitable choice for organizations with complex SaaS environments.

Expert Insight: Few organizations have a full understanding of the scope of their SaaS applications, and SaaS providers offer radically different security capabilities and create different risks. Insight by Gartner

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Adaptive Shield and Obsidian Security Feature Comparison

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Adaptive Shield Key Features

• Comprehensive Risk Assessment: Continuous risk evaluation across SaaS platforms, focusing on configuration issues and vulnerabilities.
• Security Posture Monitoring: Continuous monitoring of misconfigurations. 
• Compliance Checks: Out-of-the-box compliance frameworks that simplify adherence to regulations.
• User Access Management: Enforce the principle of least privilege across SaaS applications by determining permission level.
• Remediation Guidance: Actionable remediation suggestions provided to fix security gaps.

Obsidian Security Key Features

• User Event Behavior Analytics (UEBA): Utilizes machine learning to monitor user activity and detect anomalous behavior that could indicate a security threat.
• Insider Threat Detection: Focuses on identifying and mitigating risks associated with insider threats.
• Advanced Threat Detection: Uses behavior-based detection to identify and respond to potential security incidents.
• User-Centric Governance: Protects critical SaaS applications by monitoring user interactions and access patterns.
• Incident Response: Provides tools to investigate and respond to security incidents within SaaS environments.

Implementation and User Experience of Adaptive Shield and Obsidian Security

• Adaptive Shield:  The platform is also API-based, and agentless. Adaptive Shield has a straightforward setup and once connected it's easy to use. The platform is designed to simplify the management of SaaS security, providing CISOs with clear insights and actionable data. Its user experience is focused on efficiency, with minimal training required to get up and running.
• Obsidian Security: The platform is also API-based, and agentless. Ingesting data from SaaS applications, normalizing and deduplicating can take several business days. The platform's interface is geared toward monitoring and responding to user-centric threats, offering a streamlined experience for security teams focused on insider risk management.

Number of Integrations of Adaptive Shield and Obsidian Security

• Adaptive Shield: Offers broad integration support with numerous SaaS platforms, focusing on widely-used applications like Google Workspace, Salesforce, and Slack. Its integration ecosystem is designed to cover all major SaaS providers. However, once connected, Adaptive Shield does not offer comprehensive security coverage and its capabilities do not extend beyond basic posture management and threat detection and response. 
• Obsidian Security: Integration options are more limited, with a focus on key SaaS applications such as Salesforce, Microsoft, Workday, ServiceNow, Google, Okta, and Slack. Niche or industry-specific SaaS applications are not supported.

Overview of Compliance Features of Adaptive Shield

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Adaptive Shield provides a robust compliance management framework, focusing on simplifying the process of maintaining compliance across SaaS applications. The platform includes pre-built compliance templates for major regulations like GDPR, CCPA, and SOC 2. It continuously monitors the compliance status of SaaS applications, offering real-time alerts and detailed compliance reports to help CISOs stay ahead of regulatory requirements.

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Overview of Compliance Features of Obsidian Security

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Obsidian Security offers compliance features focused on monitoring user behavior and access patterns to ensure that SaaS environments adhere to internal policies and external regulations. While not as comprehensive as AppOmni's compliance capabilities, Obsidian's tools provide valuable insights into potential compliance risks associated with user actions.

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Compliance Comparison of Adaptive Shield and Obsidian Security

• Adaptive Shield: Simplifies compliance with pre-configured templates and continuous monitoring. It emphasizes ease of use, making it easier for organizations to maintain compliance without extensive manual effort. Adaptive Shield’s real-time alerts and detailed reporting also ensure that any compliance issues are promptly addressed.
• Obsidian Security: Provides basic compliance features centered around user behavior and access monitoring. It is more focused on internal policy enforcement and insider risk management than on comprehensive regulatory compliance.

SaaS to SaaS Discovery Capabilities of Adaptive Shield and Obsidian Security

• Adaptive Shield: Offers integrated app discovery with a focus on risk assessment. The platform not only identifies SaaS applications but also evaluates their risk profiles, enabling CISOs to make informed decisions about which apps to sanction or block. It provides less comprehensive coverage compared to AppOmni but can discover shadow IT.
• Obsidian Security: App discovery is more limited, with a focus on key applications that are monitored for user behavior. It provides less comprehensive coverage compared to AppOmni and cannot discover shadow IT.

Shadow IT Capabilities of Adaptive Shield and Obsidian Security

• Adaptive Shield: Offers basic shadow IT detection with integrated risk assessment. Adaptive Shield can discover unsanctioned apps but cannot provide visibility into the associated identities. The platform identifies unauthorized SaaS usage and evaluates the associated risks, providing CISOs with the information needed to enforce security policies and protect organizational data.
• Obsidian Security: Does not offer Shadow IT capabilities. Primarily focused on monitoring user behavior within known applications. It is less effective in detecting and managing unauthorized SaaS usage.

Reco’s Integration Capabilities

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Reco can discover and secure over 50,000 SaaS applications. It integrates with 100+ SaaS applications. Reco develops new application integrations using a low-code, no-code development and can add a new full-featured integration in 3-5 days.

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Reco’s Comprehensive App Discovery and Shadow IT Features

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Reco is a comprehensive SaaS security solution that supports the entire lifecycle of SaaS, from posture management to shadow IT and threat detection and response. It gives organizations full visibility into their SaaS ecosystem, monitors permissions and access across identities, and tracks misconfigurations and configuration drifts. 

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Reco uses advanced analytics around persona, actions, interactions and relationships to other users, and then uses this context to send prioritized alerts on potential exposure. This comprehensive picture is generated continuously using the Reco Identities Interaction Graph and empowers security teams to take swift action to effectively prioritize their most critical points of risk. Reco uses a low-code/no-code approach to add a new SaaS integration in 3-5 days. 

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App Discovery: 

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Until now, even answering how many SaaS applications were connected to an organization’s environment was almost impossible, let alone what they are. Reco’s AI-based graph technology connects in minutes and provides immediate visibility to security teams to continuously discover all SaaS applications, Shadow IT, GenAI tool usage, and data exposure risks. Reco is then able to identify, contextualize, prioritize and – most importantly – address potential risks.

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Shadow IT:

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Reco monitors email headers and uses this data to discover apps installed without IT approval/authorization. Reco is the only solution that combines this technology with posture management and threat detection within the SaaS ecosystem. 

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Reco’s Key Features and Benefits

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Reco is a full lifecycle SaaS security solution that brings a suite of innovative features that are redefining standards in the SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) category.

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Identity Management: 

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Reco introduces a contextual, graph-based approach to identity management. Unlike traditional SSPM solutions that treat identity in isolation, Reco's system integrates identities across all SaaS platforms, providing a unified view that provides context, enhances security oversight, and bolsters incident response. This graph-based approach offers deep insight into potential security risks associated with interconnected identities and permissions and fewer false positives thanks to this crucial context absent from other SSPM solutions.

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Reco Success Story: Reco detected insider risk of a leaving employee snooping and downloading excessive files from Salesforce. The customer was able to address this quickly.

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Advanced Analytics & ITDR:

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Reco’s contextual graph is the baseline for the real-time adaptive policy engine that allows end users to create and modify security policies that respond dynamically in real time to emerging threats. Reco integrates with existing security tools such as SOAR platforms and SIEMs, automating remediation processes. This reduces both the window of opportunity for attackers and configuration drifts as they happen. This continuous compliance helps organizations identify and remediate potential threats that might otherwise go unnoticed for months until performing official compliance audits.

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Reco Success Story: By reducing the number of unclear alerts by 50%, Reco was able to help a a customer’s security team save time, freeing them to focus on more important tasks. Reco’s AI-based solution provided the missing context needed to understand what actions were needed to take action quickly and accurately. 

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Multi-Tenant Management: 

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Reco is designed for both service providers and large enterprises. Reco supports complex multi-tenant environments, allowing organizations to manage multiple clients or business units from a single, centralized platform. Each tenant's data is isolated and secure. 

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Reco Success Story: Reco's contextual alerts, automated workflows, and policy management functionalities provided immediate value to customers. One customer shared that they have enhanced their ability to protect customer data, mitigate risks, and create a secure environment for both customers and employees.

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Permissions and Access: 

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Over-permissioned access, stale accounts, and external accounts pose immense risks to organizations’ data security. Reco continuously assesses users’ permission level using the principle of least privilege access, ensuring users and service accounts have no more access than necessary. In addition, Reco helps identify and revoke permissions that are unused or dormant, stale accounts, and risky user behavior that could lead to a breach. This constant monitoring across identities helps organizations ensure over-privileged users don’t become a liability. 

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Reco Success Story: A new member of the IT team automatically received Admin privileges in the SSO provider, and then was granted privileged access to Salesforce, Github, and NetSuite. The Reco platform alerted them of this situation so they could rightsize user access.

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Compliance and Configurations: 

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As misconfigurations are one of the highest risks organizations face, Reco can help teams stay in continuous compliance by monitoring for configuration changes or drifts. These metrics are fully customizable to help organizations recognize and resolve compliance issues before an audit. By tracking and gaining visibility into these potential risks, organizations are able to ensure they are following the correct industry best practices and frameworks. 

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Reco Success Story: Reco’s posture dashboard enabled one customer to clearly understand their posture gaps. The platform highlighted misconfigurations but also offered straightforward steps for resolution, saving them invaluable time.

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How Reco Enhances Efficiency and Compliance

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Reco has saved costs, time and lowered risk for organizations. Users saved 500+ hours/year when automating the user access review process, and 350+ hours/year no longer handling manual data aggregation and correlation for investigation. They saved $70,000/year on average when automating posture checks and mapping to compliance frameworks, and $50,000/year when removing stale accounts identified using Reco. Users lower risk by 90% from the visibility gained across core SaaS applications, third-party apps, and shadow IT, and lower risk by 70% when automating event monitoring in Salesforce and Microsoft 365. 

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Conclusion

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For CISOs evaluating SaaS security solutions, Adaptive Shield and Obsidian Security offer distinct advantages depending on the organization's specific needs. Adaptive Shield is a good fit for organizations looking for a simplified approach to SaaS security with an emphasis on risk assessment and compliance. Reco is the most comprehensive SaaS security solution, and the only option offering posture management, shadow app discovery, and threat detection. Obsidian Security, on the other hand, is better suited for organizations prioritizing user behavior monitoring and insider threat protection. Reco is the most comprehensive SaaS security solution, and the only option offering posture management, shadow app discovery, and threat detection.

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The choice will depend on whether your focus is on if the solution offers a simplified or complex approach to securing your SaaS ecosystem, or on proactively preventing data exposure or reactively mitigating insider risks.